[Colin Braley]

I think scripting would be the way to go on this, it shouldn’t be too tough.
~Colin

[Colin Braley]

Duplicate your keyed layer. Apply the change to color effect on the bottom one, and don’t worry if his hair/eyebrows change too. Then, on the top layer, draw a rough animated mask around the parts of the subject that you did not want to change color.
~Colin

[Colin Braley]

If you are trying to extrude a solid and make it a 3d object with real depth, AE can’t do that natively. You will need a plug-in for this type of thing. and in many cases a real 3d application will better suit you.
~Colin

[Colin Braley]

Try opening a blank project, importing the project that was crashing, and then resaving it. Sometimes that will do the trick. Also, check if your quicktime was recent;y upgraded toa new version. I remember back ion AE 6.5 when I upgraded quicktime once, everything got messed up.
~Colin

[Colin Braley]

If you are referring to Lloyd Alverez’s BG renderer script, I think it is very unlikely that it damaged anything. However, it is definetly possible to write scripts that deletes files, move files, change prefs etc in AE so if he created the script himself there is a possibility (however its a small one) that he has messed somehting up. I’de reccomend trashing and restoring your prefs. Also, is it just this project that is messing up….or is it any project on this machine?
~Colin

[Colin Braley]

When making your cube, make sure your layers are using square pixels, it makes things a lot easier. Also, make sure you are using the Advanced 3d Renderer. If you want a quick and easy way to make a cube by adding some expressions, check out this post. Just make sure the layers that yuo are gogin to make itno your box arent scaled, adna re the top layers in your comp.
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/2/862892?
~Colin

[Colin Braley]

loopOut(“cycle”, 4)

~Colin

[Colin Braley]

Yes, it is possible to “slide” a layer along a path using expression controls. Here is some code to get you started:

//–
percentDone = thisComp.layer(“Controls”).effect(“Percent Done”)(“Slider”);
//percentDone represents how far along the motion path the layer is
nullPos = thisComp.layer(“Controls”).transform.position;
//nullPos is the motion path we will follow
currFrame = linear( percentDone, 0, 100, 0, timeToFrames( thisComp.duration ));
nullPos.valueAtTime( framesToTime( currFrame ) )
//–

This code would take a layer, and slide it along the motion path of the layer named Controls. As the slider named “Percent Done” on the layer Controls varied form 0-100, the layer would move along the path.
~Colin

[Colin Braley]

Well you can’t make the layers become stacked in a different order via expressions, however scripting could sort the layers based on the y position at frame zero, or something like that. However, you could change the z-position of layers based on y position. You could create an expression to do something like place the layer with the largest y value at z = 0, the layer with the second largest y value at z = -100, the layer with the third largest y value at z = -200 etc. Just clarify what you are looking for a bit more and Im sure someone will be able to help you out.
~Colin

[Colin Braley]

Alright heres a position expression, that kindof works but dosen’t look that good. Its kindof messed up in that if you change some of the parameters to some very high or very low values the drops move upward, which I can’t seem to figure out and I don’t have much time to spend on this one. Sometimes the noise() function seems to be returning a negative value when it shouldn’t be…anyway heres the expression:

dripBeginTimeMin = 0;
dripBeginTimeMax = 3;
dripBeginY = 0;
dripEndY = thisComp.height + 10;
dripSpeed = 70;
dripSpeedVaryAmt = 5;//dont change me too much
jitteriness = 100;//increase for less jitteriness
//—————————–
seedRandom( index, true );
dripBeginTime = random( dripBeginTimeMin, dripBeginTimeMax );
t = time – dripBeginTime;
x = random(0, thisComp.width);
pBeforeNoise = [x , dripSpeed * t + dripBeginY];
if( time > t ){
velocNoise = dripSpeedVaryAmt * noise( pBeforeNoise / jitteriness );
pNoise = [0 , velocNoise * t];
pFinal = pBeforeNoise + pNoise ;
}
pFinal
//expressions done

~Colin