[Declan Smith]

Nice! Much better way of doing it.

Declan Smith
https://www.madpanic.tv
After Effects CS5.5/ FCS3 / Canon 7D / Canon XL2 / Reason / Cubase

“it’s either binary or it’s not”

[Declan Smith]

Hi

i) Yes, I mean add the clamp(value,270,450) to your rotation value itself (alt/option click on the rotation and add that there)

ii) Yes, select the numbers 360 then pickwhip to the rotation value so that it would read something like (assuming the layer is called “Sun”):

rotationCurrentValue=thisComp.layer(“Sun”).transform.rotation

It doesn’t help when there is an error in the script 🙁 Please see below. The last line should have been a + not –

rotationCurrentValue=thisComp.layer("Sun").transform.rotation; // This needs to be linked to your actual rotation
rotationMax=450;
rotationMin=270;
slantMin=-100;
slantMax=100;
rotationRange=450-270;
slantRange=slantMax-slantMin;
percentageFSD=(rotationCurrentValue-rotationMin)/rotationRange;

newValue=(slantRange * percentageFSD) + slantMin;

Declan Smith
https://www.madpanic.tv
After Effects CS5.5/ FCS3 / Canon 7D / Canon XL2 / Reason / Cubase

“it’s either binary or it’s not”

[Declan Smith]

An alternative for a self contained looping expression is as below, using an array. The animationLength is the time over which one complete cycle is to be completed, in this case 5 seconds.

animationLength=5;
months=['Jan','Feb','Mar','Apr','May','Jun','Jul','Aug','Sep','Oct','Nov','Dec'];
months[Math.floor(time*months.length/animationLength) % months.length]


I have edited the script so you can adapt this for longer or shorter arrays.

Declan Smith
https://www.madpanic.tv
After Effects CS5.5/ FCS3 / Canon 7D / Canon XL2 / Reason / Cubase

“it’s either binary or it’s not”

[Declan Smith]

Seems like you just need to change one scale to another, so I would tackle this by normalising the values by applying the code below to your slant effect value.

Also, you would clamp your rotatation to your scale: So on the rotation put

clamp(value,270,450)

Hope this helps

rotationCurrentValue=360; // This needs to be linked to your actual rotation value
rotationMax=450;
rotationMin=270;
slantMin=-100;
slantMax=100;
rotationRange=450-270;
slantRange=slantMax-slantMin;
percentageFSD=(rotationCurrentValue-rotationMin)/rotationRange;

newValue=(slantRange * percentageFSD) - slantMin;

Declan Smith
https://www.madpanic.tv
After Effects CS5.5/ FCS3 / Canon 7D / Canon XL2 / Reason / Cubase

“it’s either binary or it’s not”

[Declan Smith]

Didn’t know about the Option Drag feature, very useful, thankyoul

I suppose the example I gave with a simple rectangle too simplistic. What I am trying to do is have an arrow head follow the same animated path that dashes on the stroke follow. My assumption here was that stroke follows the path. If you have a complicated shape made up of multiple shapes with merged paths, pucker&bloat or other operators, it would be nice to have someway of tracking the resultant (and possible keyframed) path.

I’ve tried autotrace, but that results in hundreds of small masks, each of which is closed around the pixels it’s defining (like multiple tiny polygons), so copy and pasting the path doesn’t give the desired results as the arrowhead will traverse each mask shape.

Declan Smith
https://www.madpanic.tv
After Effects CS5.5/ FCS3 / Canon 7D / Canon XL2 / Reason / Cubase

“it’s either binary or it’s not”

[Declan Smith]

Thanks. I tried that, but it doesn’t seem to play ball with the rectangles, ellipses, polygons or stars. Maybe they are treated differently? The script works well for custom paths though.

Declan Smith
https://www.madpanic.tv
After Effects CS5.5/ FCS3 / Canon 7D / Canon XL2 / Reason / Cubase

“it’s either binary or it’s not”

[Declan Smith]

What I don’t understand is that the reporting of colors is inconsistent. The underlying file remains unchanged, but different apps report different values for the RGB values. I can understand that apps will display differently, but in the case of FCP, it’s own scopes showed the midgrey as 56% instead of 50% i.e. a raised level.

It’s the discrepancy of the reporting that I find alarming, as passing files around / transcoding may or may not have an impact! Take the adobe kuler website in safari. The OS colorpicker and the after effects color picker report the correct RGB values for a particular color swatch regardless of the display color profile, i.e. they agree. Interestingly though if you select the surrounding menubar in safari, changing the display profile will affect the results returned, but the main contents window seems unaffacted.

So all in all, very inconsistent behaviour. If I can be confident that the files I output from AE are correct then I am happy. As for the rest, then I seriously think I have either missed something fundamental or the whole color management thing is a mess.

Declan Smith
https://www.madpanic.tv
After Effects CS5.5/ FCS3 / Canon 7D / Canon XL2 / Reason / Cubase

“it’s either binary or it’s not”

[Declan Smith]

Ah ok, that would explain it.

Also tried color picking the clips from VLC and MPEG Streamclip, which also return back yet different values. Why do all these apps not just let the display be responsible for how the colors are displayed? It really makes the use of the color picker an almost pointless task because it just picks what some applications’ interpretation of a color is.

Anyway, knowing that both PhotoShop and AfterEffects respect color profiles at least give me some level of confidence of repeatability and certainty.

Declan Smith
https://www.madpanic.tv
After Effects CS5.5/ FCS3 / Canon 7D / Canon XL2 / Reason / Cubase

“it’s either binary or it’s not”

[Declan Smith]

Hi,

Ok. Not sure if this is close to what you want, but see the attached AEP. The rotation expression may need a little playing with to get the right feel, but basically its related to the acceleration of your pendulum (at least that was my think). The / 4 was to dampen the motion down.

3757_kineticpenduluminertia.aep.zip

Declan Smith
https://www.madpanic.tv
After Effects CS5.5/ FCS3 / Canon 7D / Canon XL2 / Reason / Cubase

[Declan Smith]

This may of interest
https://www.motion-graphics-exchange.com/after-effects/Pendulum/495ce36102411

Declan Smith
https://www.madpanic.tv
After Effects CS5.5/ FCS3 / Canon 7D / Canon XL2 / Reason / Cubase