Woah, apparently the answer was on the surface.. thank you for bringing it up, Dan!
I remember reading about it in the manual, wondered the real application, seldom saw it mentioned in tutorials. Copilot was none the wiser.
Thank you, thank you, thank you Master!

There is a comp with Camera and animated 2Dnull, which position I want to project to the 3D layer 8000 pixels in Z from Cam. Unfortunately:

var pp = thisComp.layer("2DNull") ; thisLayer.fromWorld(pp.toWorld(pp.anchorPoint)) ;

applied to the effect “Point Control”, gives scaled down results, not following the 2D position.
What am I missing?

Hey John,

Why would that be a problem?

Actually, as the light’s position went behind the camera, I was unable to generate any ray in any method, even I’d like to do so. Thus, all my example images are light-in-front-of-cam cases, even I am looking for the shots where the light source is off-frame.

Hey,

Thanks for your input, Graham.

If I got your idea correctly, then I’ve already tried that. It gave similar results to what can me seen in Lightburst example image. There – please, correct me, if I’m wrong – the raygen takes the matte from what’s seen in current frame from the camera i.e. skies. The problem arises when layers close to cam begin…

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Hi,

I’ve seen that the topic of parallel rays has been discussed years ago; however, I can’t seem to apply it to my case. Additionally, perhaps new methods have emerged.

Here, I have built a pseudo 3D scene made of many flat 3D layers (see street_scene img). At the moment, there is panning camera motion. Later, it is planned to add motion of the car…

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UPDATE: Testing even further, I found out, that the affected part is the Effects animation, whereas the transform animation is correct: separate, underlying layers unaffected. See attached AEP for demonstration and own tests, as the remedy for this is still unknown.

I need the AcceptLights: OFF 😀 Apparently, this option is not there in A3D, yet.

Otherwise, I am using several layers of nesting to build complex pseudo 3D environments. What you say about mixing renderers in this scenario, at least until recent, won’t work – as soon as you collapse transforms, the comp is rendered by the engine of parent…

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Hey David,

Thanks for your input.

I experience the same behavior also with Advanced3D renderer, not Classic3D.

Yes, the AdjustmentLayer can do the “trick”, however, after that, the 3D depth sorting is lost, and you cannot do anything more complex without making a split-layer-hell in the Timeline, e.g. I have some 60+ of such blocks for pavement…

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So, the problem seems to run even deeper and is unrelated to expressions.

Apparently, if I nest several copies of the same 3D comp with collapsed transformations, then the very top layer influences the rest of the copies, e.g. changing its time value (animated timeRemap, expression, or simply shifting the layer over time), makes all the…

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UPDATE: Weirdest of all, soloing the single box layer changed its rotation, where I also have similar expressions, based on timeless random seed. It is like soloing suddenly impacted the layer’s index OR enabled the execution of particular expression. I can’t tell which one is true, as the details are small, but scene – too large.

Also, soloing…

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Hi all,

I was about to quickly generate a bunch of a slightly random 3D boxes made of several drawings. For that I’ve made a 6 sec long Source comp where I randomized pieces for every side, added slight CC too, all expressions, and it really appears random for every frame in that comp.

Now I nested that Source into main comp, enabled 3D and… Read more

2D parallax shouldn’t be so hard to achieve by much more simpler means, aren’t you over-complicating the solution? Unless it is 3D, where the speed is calculated based on camera parameters, for 2D it is you who decides how much the second layer is moving faster/slower than the first one, i.e. same

value + layer1.position * 1.2 ;

may suffice.
If you…

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Select both, and, it is Speed graph for position and rotation you want to manipulate for a nice slow-in. Since 2 is farther away, its positional speed is higher than that of 1. With both selected you can compare the speeds, make the speed at first frame higher, and at the last frame 0. Similarly adjust the rotation.

Hey Hector,
Thank you for your input.
What should I do in order to execute the script? I saved it as jsx and run from File>Scripts.. however it generates errors.
Consulting the scripting manual AE Scripting Guide 22.3.0 docs
, I failed to find such thing as activeDependecy, also quality attribute is listed for the layer objects only. Should I look…

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Gladly.
I have scene filled with hand-drawn items composed of flat (sometimes curved too) 3D layers. What I need is a perspective changes as the camera moves.

Hey, I am trying to simulate convex object by layering multiple layers of the same, masked image.

However, seems I have hit the limit of 40’ish layers where I get those black artifacts, even my Comp’s Settings for Render Quality is set to 99% – it renders ok in precomp, but that’s not enough to render the final image. Unfortunately, that’s the…

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Is there a way to access Quality settings value of the comp for the Cinema 4D renderer?

I’d like to script the textLayer.sourceText with such an essential information as at what quality the scene is rendered, as the value is NOT impacted by the Render Settings in Queue, and is buried in UI – prone to be forgotten before hitting the Render button.

Assuming you have there a bunch of small square layers, I would animate it with sine expression for y coordinate, and some more automation. Anyways, this topic must be well covered by others, you can find several ways to tackle the thing, e.g. https://youtu.be/DY73Kyk0T7A?si=PYUpT7q2_yJ7ZEAV&t=147
See, if you can figure out yourself, otherwise give…

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The performance is really slow, however it is hard to judge without seeing the sys specs and how much the CPUs are loaded. A couple of things to start with:

1. Enable the RenderTime tab in the Timeline pane – there will appear small progress bars with number of milliseconds it took to process for each of the layers.

2. Open the Task Manager…

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This very likely might not be related to the sourceText property, rather could be something with other properties responsible for the style.

Seems, you have deleted the reference vid.. Is your question still unanswered?

Hey David,
Thank you for taking time and explaining the thing.
I was rather surprised I could not find an example where looping commands are used in a way wiggle could be used as a “method” e. g. opacity.wiggle(2,50), which was used in the very example by The Dan you quoted.
Yes, apparently playing with the time was the most affordable way to…

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Guau, Dan!
Thanks to you, it works exactly as expected. Subtracting a minuscule amount time (here: frameDuration/2) from the current time equalized the overall look of the character, which was animated “on twos” – the feet are sliding less, while the body hasn’t started to strobe noticeably.
I’m still going to experiment with animation of that…

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Hey, thanks Dan!

All I want is to sample a value from the loopOut(“offset”)-ed data, and output it instead of actual value. There in the image you can see the keyframed animation in red, and desired animation in dotted magenta.

In my code, there for the sampling I used valueAtTime(time-DeltaT), were DeltaT was the amount of time I want to sample…

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I have animated-on-twos moon-walking character, and I need to put it into tracking camera motion, which, when match-moved, either strobes the character or the environment.
Thus, I’d like to see how it works with some inbetween-keyframes controls.
There are some dozen linear keys in every even frame number for the first second, which then is looped…

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My first attempt, yet I managed to concoct some kind of working script that solves this, apparently, a duplication bug in 6421 control.

function cloneLayers(num_of_copies, keep_selfref, move_after) {
    app.beginUndoGroup("Clone Selected Layer(s)") ;
    var comp = app.project.activeItem ;
    if (comp && comp instanceof CompItem) {
        var…

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Is it likely you are looking just for a rectangle which will change its size depending on the text entered, right?
In that case, you would split your graphics into two layers: one with text, another with rectangular shape. Then there many tutorials around that show how to prime the underlying rectangle so it reacts to the text. Here’s one of those..

Is there a way to duplicate a layer so, that the Effects with Layer property that points to the very same layer is duplicated with self-reference?
The regular duplicates maintain the original setting. E.g. when using CC Composite, you’d likely to point to the same layer – unfortunately, this cannot be scripted with thisLayer, and invoking the every…

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Thank you Dan,
Your expression works like a charm, except it just needed some minor adjustment for the result:

L = thisComp.layer(“Light_POS”) ;
p1 = L.toWorld(L.anchorPoint) ;
p2 = toWorld(anchorPoint) ;
v = p1 – p2 ;
v2 = fromWorldVec(v) ;
+radiansToDegrees(Math.atan2(v2[1],v2[0])) -90 ;

Thankyouthankythankyouthankyou Dan!
This particular case is solved.…

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Sorry, apparently there is no bug, and the CC Composite works as expected.
The “bug” happened upon layer duplication – it just kept original layer’s setting, even it was pointing to itself – the pointing-to-itself wasn’t duplicated.
Unfortunately, there is no way to script the TopLayer property to thisLayer, which in turn undermines the flexibility…

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The CC Composite samples over only the first frame of the footage – true / false?

Is it well known Composite-specific, a bug, or what else? Was looking up
in AE Help/Community, Cycore, forums, asked Copilot – no notions of such issue. Is it just me?

As soon as I applied CC Composite to Time Remapped layer, where time value is other than…

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If I were doing something similar, I’d approach the problem from another direction.
The main object there is that black grid box that scales from zero to hero, to which the pink and gray boxes are pinned (not parented); the pink box will have the anchorPoint snapped to the bottom right corner, the gray box – to the upper left corner.
Expression for…

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Hey Dan,

I am not behind my workstation, can tell you just from the memory.
I am trying to simulate rim light and shadow on tree leaves, using the Emboss effect, some sort of toon shading.
The comp consists of 3D layers only.

— There’s a root null, to which some fifty leaf copies are parented (+ bunch of expressions, including for Orientation and…

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Yeah, it made no errors, thank you! 😉
However, the result was not the expected behavior – the angle is changing, however, unpredictably slow, then suddenly to the opposite direction, even the Light_POS had barely moved.
Haven’t figured out what is what, yet at the moment look[1] works better than look[2] and look[0].
Will proceed the next week.

From what you describe, I suspect, that would not be the result you are after, as usually for those analogue counters, the increment happens once previous disc rolls from 9 to 0.
Assuming you have 10 secs long base composition where all the numbers snap one by one through, loopable, you can use this expression in TimeRemap property:

n =…

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Hey,
What would be the way to convert one 3D layer’s pos to angle for an effect within another 3D layer?
I tried using :

L = thisComp.layer(“Light_POS”) ;
a = fromWorld(L.toWorld(L.anchorPoint)) ;
lookAt([0,0], a) ;

Yet I get Array 3 result for a and lookAt, which I can’t feed into angle.

Hi Filip,

Thank you for your answer, yet the news You’ve brought were kind of sad. 🙂

Having an intermediate knowledge of AFX expressions, I was inspired by CreateNullsFromPaths script and https://ae-scripting.docsforadobe.dev/matchnames/layer/shapelayer.html and was hoping there is something esoteric, like

…(“ADBE Root Vectors Group”)(1)(“ADBE…

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Hi there,

Is it possible to get resulting data from Shape layer path, that has operators applied, such as Merge and WigglePaths, to be fed into another ShapePath/MaskPath property. Call it “code level precompose”.
Alternatively, are there code snippets that would emulate those vector filters?

What I am after is to use Scribble effect on a… Read more