[Darren Hardaway]

hehehe, I don’t even know what posterizeTime does, I’m just really starting with expressions. But what I think you are trying to do is force the solid to hold 100 opacity for a random time between 1-2 seconds? You could use an if/else to tell it when to turn “on” but how to use a random number generator to tell how long to stay “on” then turn “off” would be beyond me.

[Darren Hardaway]

hello….

I was trying to do something WAY redundant, basically I took about a half hour using a graphing calculator to find a path made with e^(x) that fit a 720×480 comp, then I found the inverse ln(x) function, then I stuck them in AE, and guess what? It didn’t work 😛 It’s okay tho, the path it made was easy enough to recreate by just warping the sin and cos(time) so it was really unneccessary to me, I was just experimenting. However, I was curious as to what logarithm and natural exponential functions can do for AE expressions, because I just got done with my intermed. algebra class and I’m wondering what else I can do with these cool little tools other than solve countinuous compound interest for money amounts I don’t have >_>

[Darren Hardaway]

see if this works

wiggle(1,100)

it worked pretty well for me, kinda random and it held the 100% opacity for a good amount of time.

[Darren Hardaway]

thanks, found it, but it didnt exactly work, probably because I’m trying to keep it too simple. Here was the idea:

On anchorpoint of layer:

X=(time*29.97)*2-99;
[X,100*Math.log((1/50)*(X+100))]

okay so I tried inverting this, and I think the invert is

X=(time*29.97)*2-99;
[X,Math.exp(.01*X)*50-100]

According to a TI-84 its pretty close, only the x-values are totally funky. Is there any way to call thisComp.width to determine the x values? I think thats what I’m looking for.

[Darren Hardaway]

I’m not sure if I know exactly what you are talking about. If you are using CS3 and lower you could upload a project file, I think your saying particular is on a precomp, but I’m not sure why you would do this because it would put the particles on a flat layer (unless that’s desired) If your still watching this thread a project file or more info would help

[Darren Hardaway]

if anyone is interested in the last comment on this post, I think the answer is a little something like this
clockStart = 0; // start time in seconds
timeToStart = 2
clockTime = clockStart + (time – timeToStart);
sec = Math.floor(clockTime).toString();
ms = Math.floor((clockTime%1)*100).toString();
if(time>timeToStart==true){
if (ms.length < 2) ms = "0" + ms; sec + ":" + ms } else(value) Oh I changed the timer to count up, not down, to fix change line one's value to 120, and change line two's + to a - and if you want it to Stop at a specific time, flip the inequality symbol.

[Darren Hardaway]

Alright, I kinda right clicked on position (duh) and checked separate dimesions, made a null with sliders for X Y and Z, then spliced it up and made nifty movement for all parameters. Here it is

PositionX
amount=thisComp.layer(“X”).effect(“Amount”)(“Slider”);
time*amount

PositionY
timeToStop=thisComp.layer(“Y”).effect(“timeToStop”)(“Slider”);
CTRL=thisComp.layer(“Y”).effect(“CTRL”)(“Slider”);
A=thisComp.layer(“Y”).effect(“A”)(“Slider”);
B=thisComp.layer(“Y”).effect(“B”)(“Slider”);
C=thisComp.layer(“Y”).effect(“C”)(“Slider”);
if(time

[Darren Hardaway]

I’m not using a 3D camera, I didn’t think I needed it because I can get 3D depth with keyframes without it. I thought maybe splicing up the expression and…collapsing? the position, if that means making x y and z separate parameters to animate. I haven’t really worked a whole lot with expressions, I’m kind of converting math problems from my book and assigning dynamic variables to it. I started with a vertex formula to make a parabola A(time+-B)^2+C but it freaked with time being squared, so I used Math.sin instead. But, I’ll try with a 3D cam, and collapsing? the position parameter would be nice for clutter, and could make it more dynamic I think. Thanks for any help!