[Dan Fredley]

Add a “Slider control” effect and then instead of typing numbers in the wiggle expression, pick whip the slider control value. Then you can keyframe the slider control. You can do this for both the frequency and amplitude.

https://adobe.ly/Juv02D

Dan Fredley

[Dan Fredley]

Try setting the transfer mode to “Alpha Add.”

Dan Fredley

[Dan Fredley]

Upload your project and I’ll take a look.

Dan Fredley

[Dan Fredley]

Here’s my AE CS5.5 rendition for reference:

BoatWaveWarp

Dan Fredley

[Dan Fredley]

The target variable is wrong–you should place the whole expression on the boat rotation not assign the variable “target” to the rotation.

It should read something like this according to your layer name:

target = thisComp.layer("Boat");

You can also just write:

target = thisLayer;

By the way, the offset is for going right to left. If the boat is going from left to right it might be better to change it to 10 instead of -10.

Dan Fredley

[Dan Fredley]

Apply the rotation expression to the boat rotation. You’ll have to change the “target” variable by pickwhipping the boat layer and the “sample” variable by pickwhipping the ocean layer.

Dan Fredley

[Dan Fredley]

To bake expressions:

Select the property you would like to bake and go up to Animation>Keyframe Assistant>Convert Expression to Keyframes.

Dan Fredley

[Dan Fredley]

I wrote a better expression in case the boat layer reaches the edge of the composition. I suggest precomping the boat and water layer in a 2x wide comp to animate the boat across a full comp otherwise the expression won’t work past the edge of the main comp. I hope that makes sense:

Final position expression:

target = thisComp.layer("Controller").effect("Boat")("Layer");
targetWorldPos = target.toWorld(target.anchorPoint);

sample = thisComp.layer("Controller").effect("Ocean")("Layer");

for (i = 0; i < height; i++){
if (sample.sampleImage([clamp(targetWorldPos[0],0,thisComp.width), i], [0.5, 0.5], true)[3] > 0){
top = [0,i];
break;
} else {
top = [0,thisComp.height];
}
}

newWorldPos = target.fromWorld(target.toWorld(top));
[value[0],newWorldPos[1]]

To be able to rock the boat:

Final rotation expression:

target = thisComp.layer("Controller").effect("Boat")("Layer");
targetWorldPos = target.toWorld(target.anchorPoint);

sample = thisComp.layer("Controller").effect("Ocean")("Layer");
offset = -10;

for (i = 0; i < height; i++){
if (sample.sampleImage([clamp(targetWorldPos[0]+offset,0,thisComp.width), i], [0.5, 0.5], true)[3] > 0){
top = [0,i];
break;
} else {
top = [0,thisComp.height];
}
}

newWorldPos = target.fromWorld(target.toWorld(top));
offsetPos = [target.position[0]+offset,newWorldPos[1]];

for (i = 0; i < height; i++){
if (sample.sampleImage([clamp(targetWorldPos[0],0,thisComp.width), i], [0.5, 0.5], true)[3] > 0){
top = [0,i];
break;
} else {
top = [0,thisComp.height];
}
}

targetWorldPos = target.fromWorld(target.toWorld(top));
boatPos = [target.position[0],targetWorldPos[1]];

radians = Math.atan2(boatPos[1] - offsetPos[1],boatPos[0] - offsetPos[0]);
radiansToDegrees(radians);

This is going to be really slow to calculate. You should bake all of these expressions. Then after you bake the rotation put this expression on it otherwise it will be really choppy:

Final baked rotation expression:

smooth(.5,10)

Dan Fredley

[Dan Fredley]

It sounds like you can mask it on by animating a mask path or instead of using silhouette blending mode you can put the rectangle over the text and set the text’s track matte to alpha matte. Your blue arrow pointing to Nick Anderson’s silhouette setting is right over the track matte setting.

Again, have the rectangle over the text before you set the track matte because it will automatically disable the rectangle’s visibility. Then you can set the opacity and color of your text to whatever you want.

Dan Fredley

[Dan Fredley]

just noticed you have a shape layer. You’ll need to precomp the shape layer with the slider or use a solid instead

Dan Fredley