[Filip Vandueren]

It’s important to think about what happens exactly when the small circle changes direction: should the other circles stay where they are, and only start following down when their “leader” has passed their own y-value ?

Or should they stretch? All of them moving proportionally back at the same time until the smallest one goes beneath the zero mark?

Or does changing direction cause a rippling wave ?

[Filip Vandueren]

Before you render, if you look at just the alpha channel in the comp viewer, are the lines present there ?

Perhaps your layers are 1 pixel smaller than your comps, and your composition background – if set to white – will not show you the “holes”. If you then render via Adobe Media Encoder (Just an assumption as your project is full of MP4s), AME forces a black background color.

[Filip Vandueren]

In a pinch, an adjustment layer with the transform effect could affect the precomp if it’s placed beneath it.

But again that’s not idiot-proof…

Maybe just structure the project as a template, where the team can only add footage in a media precomp, and that precomp is used elsewhere with the right expression set up?

[Filip Vandueren]

Here’s a super simple version using Text on Path:

https://imgur.com/a/QOn91bp

View post on imgur.com

[Filip Vandueren]

The expression needs to be set up where it is used, so on the scale of the layer in the main comp.

New pre-comps could be replaced into the main comp instead of added, and that way the expressions and other settings/effects that are in place remain, is that an option ?

[Filip Vandueren]

as a hack you could maybe do this ?

split = (text.sourceText.value+”,,,”).split(“,”).slice(0,3);

there will always be at least 3 (possibly empty) items in the array this way

[Filip Vandueren]

Hoi Tineke,

since we can’t change the font size per line, we’d have to do it with a text animator.

The example you chose works well since a 120% scale applies at amount -100 will give 80% scale.

here’s the recipe:

– Add a text animator for Scale

– set the scale value to 120

– give it an expression selector based on lines

– give it this expression:

lines = thisLayer.text.sourceText.value.split(/\r\n|\r|\n|\x03/);
l = lines[textIndex-1].length;
if (l<7) {
	100;
} else if (l<12) {
	0
} else {
	-100;
}

Don’t forget to set the text’s Anchor Point grouping to Line also (Text -> More options) otherwise only the individual characters will become smaller in place.

Depending on your paragraph alignment, you might also need to adjust the Grouping Alignment ([0,0] for centered text, [-100,0] for left aligned, [100,0] for right aligned)

NB: I’ve also added \x03 to the linesplitter, that’s the character After Effects uses for a soft linebreak (shift-enter)

[Filip Vandueren]

Instead of the custom addCommas() method you can also use the built-in method:

num.toLocaleString('en-us');

and if you want decimals, don’t use Math.round() in the first line but:

num = effect("Point Control")("Point")[0];
txt = num.toLocaleString('en-us', {maximumFractionDigits: 2});

This will limit it to max 2 decimal digits.

if you always want 2 decimals (123.00) then:

txt = num.toLocaleString('en-us', {minimumFractionDigits: 2, maximumFractionDigits: 2});

[Filip Vandueren]

try:

if (layers[i].name.indexOf("scale")>-1) {

or for case insensitive matching:

if (layers[i].name.match(/scale/gi)!==null) {

[Filip Vandueren]

I think this does the trick:

const ind = (textIndex-1) % (textTotal/2);

then replace all following uses of textIndex by ind