[Darby Edelen]

[Aharon Rabinowitz] “The way I understand it, you want a beam of light “shooting” out of the car lights – right? Like what you’d see from a flashlight in a dusty room?”

Good point… I assumed we were talking about the ever popular horizontal flare =O

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA

[Darby Edelen]

Alternatively, you could just convert the layer’s position toWorld() before you use the Z-value:

z = toWorld(position)[2];

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA

[Darby Edelen]

Just an addendum to that, key(1).time will give you an error if you don’t have any keyframes for that property. You should be able to try() and catch() these errors in the expression though:

https://www.w3schools.com/js/js_try_catch.asp

(AE uses JavaScript with custom classes/methods/variables for its expressions)

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA

[Darby Edelen]

[Lord Scales] “startTime = 1.5; //in seconds
endTime = 5; //in seconds
startValue = 0;
endValue = 60;

linear (time, startTime, endTime, startValue, endValue)”

You can also modify this to use keyframe times automatically.


key(1).time


Should give you the time in seconds where the first keyframe of the property is, key(2).time will give you the second.

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA

[Darby Edelen]

Does this work?


Q=thisComp.layer("atmopheric master control"); // Effect control null
startFade = Q.effect("Start Close Up")("Slider"); // Effect begins at this distance from cam
endFade = Q.effect("End Close Up")("Slider"); //Effect ends at this distance from cam

C = thisComp.activeCamera.toWorld([0,0,0]); // Cam position
x = thisComp.activeCamera.position[0]; // Cam x position
y = thisComp.activeCamera.position[1]; // Cam y position
z = position[2]; // Object z position
P = toWorld([x,y,z]); // Object relative position on the z-axis from Cam
d = length(C,P); // Distance Calculation
easeOut(d,startFade,endFade,Q.effect("Color Balance (HLS) Zoom")("Saturation"),0) // Actual effect based on startFade & endFade parameters


Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA

[Darby Edelen]

I usually set the Fill for the Shape layer to 0% and give it a Stroke in Layer Style.

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA

[Darby Edelen]

I don’t think I understand the question entirely. The Monet tracking data you posted does not have parallel sides nor 90

[Darby Edelen]

I would recommend disabling the POI all together. I’m also not a big fan of defaulting to auto-bezier spatial interpolation. Personally I prefer to turn Transform>Auto-Orient off, make my camera animations with the Camera tool keyframing the Position and Orientation properties, and then going back in and dragging out my own bezier handles where I want them.

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA

[Darby Edelen]

[Rajarshi] “I have a shot of a car headlight at night…static shot…now I want at least one light streak from the car headlights… to be horizontal… instead of looking like a Shine effect…any suggestions how to achieve this simple yet…confusing problem ??”

Try creating a matte of just the lights (you can probably do this with levels, possibly threshold) then placing that above the original footage, changing the blend mode to ‘Add’ and applying a Box Blur effect with Iterations: 4, Horizontal Only, Repeat Edges and Radius to taste.

You can add some color to the effect with Colorama, Tint, or playing with your Levels settings (depending on what you want).

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA

[Darby Edelen]

[LGABoarder] “It can’t use effects like an adjustment layer.”

Thought I should point out that Adjustment Layers and Null Objects are essentially solids that have special attributes. You could make a solid and, by toggling the Adjustment Layer layer switch, make it an adjustment layer (with no discernible difference between one created from the Layer Menu). Null Objects are more special because they are not rendered, but you could create a solid layer, turn its visibility off (or set it as a Guide Layer if you still want to see it but don’t want it rendered) and use it in exactly the same way as a Null Object. They’re very closely related.

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA