[Dan Ebberts]

I’m not sure how long the sequence is supposed to be, but something like this maybe:

posterizeTime(4)
options = [[240, 80, 233, 255], [73, 215, 0, 255], [233, 207, 202, 255], [0, 135, 202, 255]];
r = (time < .25 || time >= outPoint - .25) ? 0 : Math.floor(random(4));
options[r]/255;

[Dan Ebberts]

Something like this would be more compact, I think:

n = 14;
result = 0;
for (i = 1; i <= n; i++){
  if (thisComp.layer(index+i).effect("First Word")("Checkbox").value){
    result = i;
    break;
  }
}
result

[Dan Ebberts]

Something like this maybe:

txt = value.split("\r");
f = timeToFrames(time);
idx = Math.min(f,txt.length-1);
txt[idx]

[Dan Ebberts]

Maybe change this line:

r = Math.floor(random(4));

to this:

r = time < .25 ? 0 : Math.floor(random(4));

[Dan Ebberts]

The basic idea is the same as described here, but instead of audio level, you’re dealing with a different type of value:

http://www.motionscript.com/design-guide/audio-trigger.html

[Dan Ebberts]

I’m still pretty much in the dark as to what you’re trying to do, but a time remapping expression like this will cause your time remapped animation to run from the beginning whenever a layer marker is encountered:

m = marker;
t = 0;
if (m.numKeys > 0){
  n = m.nearestKey(time).index;
  if (time < m.key(n).time) n--;
  t = n > 0 ? time - m.key(n).time : 0;
}
t

[Dan Ebberts]

For an expression to trigger an animation based on an event, the biggest issue for the expression is generally determining when that event occurred. If you can tie it to keyframes or markers, it becomes simpler, but if it’s based on a value, then you probably have use the brute force method of going back in time (using valueAtTime), frame by frame, until you find the frame where (in your example) s went from being zero to being greater than zero. Once you have that, you can calculate how far along you should be in the animation.

You can improve performance if the expression knows the duration of the animation. That way you can limit how far back in time you have to look for a trigger. BTW, what happens at the end of your animation? Does it return to the frame 0 state?

[Dan Ebberts]

Assuming you have the Change to Color’s From parameter set to the original color, you could do something like this:

colors = [[36,244,246,255], [169,36,246,255],[246,234,36,255]]; // alternate colors
dur = 1; // how often to change colors
seed = Math.floor(time/dur);
seedRandom(seed,true);
idx = Math.floor(random(colors.length +1));
idx < colors.length ? colors[idx]/255 : effect("Change to Color")("From")

[Dan Ebberts]

The only way to reference another comp (parent or otherwise) is by name. Sometimes, depending on how you have things set up, you might be able to build the name of the other comp on the fly, based on the name of the precomp where the expression lives.

Dan

[Dan Ebberts]

This should work, as long as you’re using the JavaScript expression engine:

compName = thisComp.name;
compName.substring(compName.indexOf('-')+2).repeat(3)