[Doug Olberman]

Ah, apparently I just need to post to Creative Cow and I’ll think of a solution a day later.

Instead of having a right flank and a left flank, I just precomped the right element and left element together (they are mirror images of eachother), and repeated that precomp along my track. Since I already figured out the auto-orienting issue, this new double-flank precomp automatically facing the correct direction along the track, as well as being appropriately spaced away from it.

Thanks for putting up with my noobiness!

[Doug Olberman]

Ah, of course, the answer was right in front of me all along. For auto-orienting the trees, I simplified Dan Ebberts’ auto-orienting expression from his Creating Trails page:

strt = 0;
end = 4.0;
t = thisComp.layer("Track Path");
offset = (t.effect("offset")("Slider")/100)*(index -1);
vect = t.position.velocityAtTime(offset);
lookAt(position, position - vect)

And my stopgap solution for auto-orienting the camera works with it!

But now I have a new problem about offsetting the flank paths which I’ve started a new thread about…

Hope this helps someone down the line!

[Doug Olberman]

Amazing! Worked perfectly! Thanks so much, I’m just dipping my toe into expressions, and the toWorld/fromWorld commands are a little too far toward the deep end for me.

Anyway, thanks again!

[Doug Olberman]

Ah, good to know. Any workflow you recommend for how to go about creating this track of repeating elements that a camera will move along as well… but be able to change the shape of the track at will?