[Colin Braley]

I read this thread and am a little confused. Are you trying to use a random motion expression on all your layers while making sure that none of them have the same position, or are you trying to make sure none of the layers overlap visually? If you are trying to make sure none of the layers have the same position this wouldn’t be very hard, but if you are trying to make sure the layers don’t overlap visually this would be more difficult.
~Colin

[Colin Braley]

I read this thread and am a little confused. Are you trying to use a random motion expression on all your layers while making sure that none of them have the same position, or are you trying to make sure none of the layers overlap visually? If you are trying to make sure none of the layers have the same position this wouldn’t be very hard, but if you are trying to make sure the layers don’t overlap visually this would be more difficult.
~Colin

[Colin Braley]

I messed around with my Windows boot.ini file and got After Effects to recognize 3 gigs of ram on my new machine. I did this by adding the “/3 GB siwtch” to my boot.ini file. Check out this thread or just google “/3GB”:

https://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=292027&highlight=%2F3GB

~Colin

[Colin Braley]

From what I can tell, the academic version of AE7 is only missing a few text animation and backgroud presets, I got it about a month ago. I head from someone that academic software legally has to be at least a little different than the real thing, so maybe that’s why adobe didn’t include the presets.

~Colin

[Colin Braley]

I have had bad luck contacting Adobe with regards to what comes with educational software. I bounght AE 6.5 Pro – Educational Version under the impression it was the same as the original minus Invigorator. When I bought it I didn’t get Invigorator AND didn’t get the CC Plug ins. When I upgraded to AFter Effects 7 Educational I got the CC Plug ins and got most of the presets that ship with the regular Pro version. For some reason Adobe leaves out a few presets in the educational version of AE 7. If you contact Adobe, I would reccomend geting your info verified with another source too.
~Colin

-Colin

[Colin Braley]

Mylenium,
I’m just trying to share what I know. While this expression may have been a bit complicated for a beginner to understand, I assume others who read this thread will be able to look through it and figure out the code and maybe learn something. And in Ken’s case, he got a quick and easy solution even if he doesn’t feel like reading through all the code and figuring it out.
~Colin

[Colin Braley]

Mylenium,
I’m just trying to share what I know. While this expression may have been a bit complicated for a beginner to understand, I assume others who read this thread will be able to look through it and figure out the code and maybe learn something. And in Ken’s case, he got a quick and easy solution even if he doesn’t feel like reading through all the code and figuring it out.
~Colin

[Colin Braley]

While Mylenium’s way will work fine, I did something similar to this recently and came up with a quicker way. Just use this expression for source text of a layer:

//Begin expression
numOfLetters = 10;//Modify me
useSpaces = true;//Modify me
changeEveryFrame = false;//Modify me

//Don’t modify below this line

seedRandom(index, !changeEveryFrame)
//–
function genLetter( )
{
r = random(65, 90);//from a to z
return String.fromCharCode( r );
}
s = “”;
for(i = 0; i < numOfLetters; i++) { s += genLetter(); if(useSpaces) s += " "; } s //End expression Modify the first couple lines of code as needed. ~Colin

[Colin Braley]

While Mylenium’s way will work fine, I did something similar to this recently and came up with a quicker way. Just use this expression for source text of a layer:

//Begin expression
numOfLetters = 10;//Modify me
useSpaces = true;//Modify me
changeEveryFrame = false;//Modify me

//Don’t modify below this line

seedRandom(index, !changeEveryFrame)
//–
function genLetter( )
{
r = random(65, 90);//from a to z
return String.fromCharCode( r );
}
s = “”;
for(i = 0; i < numOfLetters; i++) { s += genLetter(); if(useSpaces) s += " "; } s //End expression Modify the first couple lines of code as needed. ~Colin

[Colin Braley]

I think you just forgot the plus sign (the string concatenation operator if you want to get fancy)

Try this:

“Velocity = ” + thisComp.layer(“Particle”).transform.position.speed

~Colin