It might be good to know what is the actual animation or video this needs to be overlayed upon ? Are you combining video that is changing perspective (like a point of view of someone woalking around, facing different directions) and you want the direction arrow to update using realtime data that is in sync with the video ?

Or are we talking about…

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Thanks Nathan.

I did wind up adapting it to a binary search method a few years later, which is Exponentially faster (but needs 16bits per channel)

https://creativecow.net/forums/thread/how-can-i-center-the-anchor-point-based-on-opacity-of-a-comps-contents/#post-2458578

Sorry, I was mistaken in the other thread; I though you were talking about this animation preset of mine: subsourcerect .

I haven’t released the source of v2 which works with fractional frames, b it perhaps this version already works for your case

https://imgur.com/9oRKx7R?r

The easiest method I can think of using only effects and not 3D-layers, while keeping it on a single layer is this:

• Hit ctl/cmd-Shift-N to add a new mask to your layer
• then hit ctl/cmd-Shift-M to numerically set the shape of the mask to be:
  Left= 0, Right= 50% of Source (the left page)
• Do the same to create a second mask but make the second…

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OK, but there’s an important difference between spatial beziers and temporal easing.

The spatial beziers are defining the shape of the path, and that’s not automatically the same as easing.

That being said, if you do want to control both easing and the tangents with the same 0-100% controls, I think the ball’s position should still have the same…

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What do you mean by “the movement information of this ball” ?

These interpolation functions are only supposed to give meaningful results between 0 and 1 (or 0 and d in this case).

Easiest fix is to start each function with this line:

 t=clamp(t,0,d);

for example:

// sinusoidal easing in/out - accelerating until halfway, then decelerating
Math.easeInOutSine = function (t, b, c, d) {
	t=clamp(t,0,d);
	return -c/2 *…

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Certainly, all the calculations for the bounding-box are already done, we just need a different final line.

For a rectangle shape, we need two 2-dimensional results: the center of the rectangle, and the width and height of the rectangle.

You could rewrite the two expressions like this:

Size:

// posterizeTime(0); // uncomment for still…

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Perhaps this one can help you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b52jyEFPnYQ

Because it is a text-animator, not a layout setting, the textbox is ignored.

And the tracking pushes all left-aligned text away from the left margin, or vice versa. So it turns out to be very handy for exaggerating the dimensions to do some testing.

I tested it with 3 lines that were exactly evenly kerned so nothing visually changed when choosing…

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Is there room in the setup to manipulate/animate the text in negative or fractional time?

I find that if you add an extreme tracking animator (say 1000 or -1000) the ratio of the sourceRect’s (left+width)/width becomes a good approximation of 0, 0.5 an 1 again for the three alignment cases.

I think it’s easiest to use an intermediate expression for this:

via scripting add a Point Control effect to the layer, give its point this expression:

fromCompToSurface([thisComp.width/2,thisComp.height/2,0]);

then read the result of that expression and set it as the new anchorpoint value,

then set the position’s value to [comp.width/2,…

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It’s not clear where you want the script to move the layer to ? Or put differently, where should teh anchorPoint be when the script is finished ? In the center of the Comp ?

Nice, can you share the url of the online tool ?

You could also rotate the individual characters with a text-animator.

I would try to use Text on a Path with a suitable dingbat font that has footsteps icons.

You can then use textanimators to reveal them along the path.

If you want to place individual layers along a path, you can use the “create Nulls from path” method, and place each layer at a different percentage along the same path, then animate thme 1 by 1, so…

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Hi Emma,

you’re starting from the .Aep I shared earlier ?

It uses Json parse and stringify, which can kind of be replaced with eval(),

and it also used styling of the sourceText (not possible in extendscript), to force the highlight marker to use a ceratin font, leading and fontsize, but if those are just set manually, it works equally well.

so this…

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Over the years, Rubik’s cubes in after effects have bene discussed a few times.

If you want to do it dynamically, I think it’s easiest to do the animation of 1 of the bricklayers rotating, and just when it hits 90°, actually reset it to 0° but switch the colors.

It’s much easier to keep track of just the colors of the faces, than to keep track of a…

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You can achieve this effect without expressions with the card dance effect,

first create a repeating grid of circles, add a card-dance with the exact number of rows and columns, and use a gradient layer’s intensity to drive the X/Y scale of the ‘cards’

I recommend this site and YouTube series:

https://www.animoplex.com/learn/expressions.html#101

Hi Joel,

I’m suspecting that it’s not really the anchorPoint that is being animated, but you’re just using the anchorpoint for that toComp() method.

You should also include the time with the toComp method like this:

compMaster = comp("Comp");
mouseLayer = compMaster.layer("Mouse Cursor");
precomp = compMaster.layer("Precomp");
layerStart =…

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Ah, sorry, I use the wrong split() parameter, this works:

words = value.split(/\s+/g);
numWords = Math.floor(effect("Slider Control")("Slider").value);
words.slice(0,numWords).join(" ")+" \u200b";

\W is any character that’s “not a word character” and it’s too strict (it only matches a-z, 0-9),
while \s is any “whitespace” character, which we need in this case.

Here’s an example of how to do it like I described:

https://imgur.com/a/hIwB07Y

View post on imgur.com

Hi Pete, there’s no method to do this in the same way one would do it with a layer’s anchorpoint.

The “per character 3D” shows small individual anchorpoints for each letter, but hose are not accessible with expressions.

A different approach to do it is by moving the letters along the path (for text on path, you can use x-position and it will slide…

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Hi Alessio,

I would do it like this:

words = value.split(/W+/g);
numWords = Math.floor(effect("Slider Control")("Slider").value);
words.slice(0,numWords).join(" ")+" u200b";

split() makes the string an array of words, slice() limits the number of elements from the array, and join() converts it to a string again

In this case I think I’d add that extra…

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Hi Sean,

that’s a lot of code to work through on a screenshot, so I haven’t

At first glance it all looks OK, but the first thing I would try is to change all the assignments at the start of your code by ending them with …(“Checkbox”) .value;

a Checkbox is an object, not a number, usually Javascript/expressions are smart and ‘cast’ the object to b…

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Hi Nils,

There’s no way to do that directly.

Some effects can be mimicked with expressions, for example by simulating our own Wiggle Paths/Wiggle Transforms via a createPath() expression.

But merging Paths is not do-able I think. For one, it’s very hard to program that logic into an expression, and apart from that: 1 Path property must always just…

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Hi Steve,

Presumably you’re putting the containing composition at the bottom of the layer-order, but because of compositing it has to be rendered first, so that’s what’s throwing a wrench in the works:

the other layers have not yet been rasterized, which would define their sourceRect, and their position depends on their parent, which is sampling…

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Maybe it was simply done frame by frame in Photoshop, actually using the smudge tool, that actually sounds like the fastest way to recreate it instead of spending hours trying to find some kind of wiggle distortion.

The reddish glow looks to me like the default setting of Trapcode Shine, but with a very low radius setting.

Here is an example using the precalculations in the text-layers:

parentLayer=thisComp.layer("Null 1");
firstLayer=thisComp.layer("Null 1").index+1; 
lastLayer=thisComp.numLayers;
margin = 40;
bulge = 133;
falloffMin = 0;
falloffMax = 600;
x=0;
data = [];
for (i=firstLayer; i<=lastLayer; i++) {
	w = thisComp.layer(i).sourceRectAtTime().width;	
	if…

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It’s pretty hard to do in expressions, because every layer’s position and scale is depending on all others:

If a layer scales up because it is close to the center, it pushes the other layers some pixels to the left and right, where it they also would have a different distance from the center, so they need to adjust their scale, which again needs to…

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Hello Rahadyan,

I don’t think the selected vertex/vertices is available in scripting. I can’t find it in the official scripting reference.

If the object .vertices would have been an array of “Vertex” objects, than each of those could have had a “selected” property. But .vertices is just a list of number coordinate-pairs.

The property .vertices…

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Hi Marina,

The way I would usually do this is to auto-orient the marker-layer towards the camera.

For the marker to convincingly stick to the surface, it’s distance from the Null should be equal to the CC Sphere’s radius.

Does that help ?

You could round the height so it only works in multiples of the lineheight (leading), that should filter out lower/upper details.

So if you already have an animation that’s doing the type on, this expression on AnchorPoint works for me:

sr=sourceRectAtTime();
st = text.sourceText.style;
ld = st.autoLeading ? st.fontSize*1.2 : st.leading;
h = ld*…

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Hey Jos,

I find this method the easiest:

seconds.toString().padStart(2,”0″);

Here’s a pretty in depth tutorial on text animators, the wiggly selector is first shown around the 10:30 mark:

https://youtu.be/plbsdkRhy8g

I think the easiest solution is to take the two colors, combine them with a multiply, and add a “change to color” effect, to transform Hue, Lightness and Saturation of the resulting multiply-mix to the exact mix of the example.

Because the way the two colors combine is depending on extra factors such as Gamma, color space,… and it’s a fair a…

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Hi Karen,

if you just want something random and don’t need to control the actual values, I would do this with a text-animator:

Make a text layer containing •••••••••••••••••••••••••…

Draw your trend line as a mask-line on this text layer, then enable text on Path.

Add a position animator with Wiggly textanimator (but with Wiggles per sec at 0 so it’s…

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Hi Vincenzo, here’s the approach I would take:

– select everything that’s at the first level of the Contents of the shape layer,

– execute the menu command for “Group Shapes” -> app.executeCommand(3741);

This Group’s Position and AnchorPoint will both automatically have the same value as the layer’s anchorPoint.

Now Set the Layer’s anchorPoint to…

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Hi Khalil, the easiest fix is to use point -controls instead of sliders, they have a different floating point implementation. (And they could hold 2 values at the same time)

If you must use sliders, you could switch to expressing the numbers as thousands or millions and multiply *1000 or *1000000 in your expression as there is no way around…

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Hi Amanda,

Many ways to do this, most are not really expression related.

You could do a fill, followed by a Cc blend or set matte to reinstate the original text alpha while keeping the color.

Or you could use a tint effect, white text black text, and then re-map white to your color control.

Or use any effect that affects the color of the layer (for…

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It can’t be done with text-animators, unless you mean using a character animator to add font stroke weight or text skewing to do faux bold / faux italics.

That case is pretty straightforward: dial in the amount of stroke you want added (you may have to also explicitly set Stroke color and stroke opacity 100 as extra properties in the same animator,…

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Hi Shane,

The layers are parented to the floor, the Nulls are not.

The values of the layers position are relative to their parent. So even if they share the same numbers, they are at a different location in space.

Sure, suppose you want to have a sourceRect for a textlayer, but you want that sourcerect to be tall enough to contain descenders, even if there aren’t any in the current text. (useful if you want to line up multiple

Choose a character for your current font that has a full height both above and below the baseline, for example the pipe symbol “|” is…

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in Illustrator you’ll have to make sure that the linedrawing is also traced as a single line drawing, and not the shape that represents a line.

You want the “strokes” setting in Illustrator, but you’ll probably have to do some manual corrections and cleanup to get it right.

With the default image trace settings straight lines for example, become a…

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Expressions are very suited for this.

What would be the trigger that decides if the layer is visible or not ?

As a example, a random flicker could be something like this:

(expression on the opacity property):

random(1) <0.75 ? 100 : 0 ;

Every frame there’s a 75% chance the opacity is 100 , otherwise it is 0.

Make a very small dash (0.01) and a large gap, with Line Cap set to round.

When combined with tapered, it’s not always a perfect circle though.

Not with the repeater.

Either with an echo solution, or with tapered dotted strokes.

Yes, the only big difference is that exponential scaling where the standard blend interpolation is linear.

Let me know if you need something else.

I can think of a few different approaches that can do 0 widths, and linear scales etc. but those wouldn’t use repeaters but echo.

Be aware: you cannot start from a 0x0 circle and scale that up to a larger circle.

Also, if the scales differ a lot, the scaling along the blend is always going to be noticeably exponential, not linear. (see screenshot) There’s no way around this if you are using the repeater.

That being said,

the original circle size gets this…

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