[Filip Vandueren]

[Midnight Oil] “I was thinking about importing the images as a sequence, but I don’t know how to make it randomly jump around with dissolves between them. If I could do that, I could just start the sequence at different times on the grid.”

If that scenario is random enough for you, where you have 1 sequence that just is looped,

then why not just first make one or two comps with the 15 frame-dissolves, (takes about 5 seconds with the sequence layers command)
render them out, re-import and interpret the movie to loop 99 times.

Now you can drop those movies in your layers and with the “pan-behind”-tool you can choose your start-point.
If you don’t want to alter the startpoints manually, enable time-remapping and add a random static value to each layer’s current time.

—

An all-expression way could also use time-remapping:

set up a pre-comp with al your images sequenced.
make a new comp with two copies of that precomp.

let’s say you want to fade in a layer over 1 second, hold for one second, then fade to the next, hold for one second etc.

create some opacity keyframes for the top-layer to reflect that animation:0-100 in 1 sec, hold 1 sec, then 100-0 down, hold 1 sec, then put a final 0% keyframe.
add a loopOut(type = "cycle", numKeyframes = 0)-expression so the keyframes get repeated.

give the time-remapping this expression:


holdTime=4; //hold each frame 4 seconds;
holdOffset=0; // offset 0 seconds
maxTime=source.duration-source.frameDuration;
seed=Math.floor((time+(holdTime-holdOffset))/holdTime);
seedRandom(seed, timeless = true);
random(maxTime)


do the same for the bottom layer, but here, change the holdOffset-value to 1

copy that pair of layers for each square and scale/position them.

Keep in mind that being a true random sequence, you will get duplicate frames from time to time.

[Filip Vandueren]

Came back to it after some thinking:


nk=numKeys;
value;

if ((nk>1) && (key(nk).time

This sees what the property was doing in the last Frame before the last keyFrame, so it's a bit smarter when it comes to non-linear interplation.
You could also set it to an even lower value like this: deltaT=0.001, in theory that would give you a more accurate value, untill the rounding errors kick in.

Take note though that we're still talking about a linear motion after the last keyframe. If you want the expression to guess how a layer that moves in a curve would continue to curve...

Well... do it by hand 😉

[Filip Vandueren]

Came back to it after some thinking:


nk=numKeys;
value;

if ((nk>1) && (key(nk).time

This sees what the property was doing in the last Frame before the last keyFrame, so it's a bit smarter when it comes to non-linear interplation.
You could also set it to an even lower value like this: deltaT=0.001, in theory that would give you a more accurate value, untill the rounding errors kick in.

Take note though that we're still talking about a linear motion after the last keyframe. If you want the expression to guess how a layer that moves in a curve would continue to curve...

Well... do it by hand 😉

[Filip Vandueren]

Ok, what the hell…

here’s the expression:


nk=numKeys;
value;

if ((nk>1) && (key(nk).time

It works like a kind of "throw"

If you keyframe two postions, rotations, opacities, scales etc... the property will just keep on going at constant speed.
It does assume the interpolation is pretty linear.

[Filip Vandueren]

Ok, what the hell…

here’s the expression:


nk=numKeys;
value;

if ((nk>1) && (key(nk).time

It works like a kind of "throw"

If you keyframe two postions, rotations, opacities, scales etc... the property will just keep on going at constant speed.
It does assume the interpolation is pretty linear.

[Filip Vandueren]

So, you want After effects to guess where a layer would end up if it would just continue at the same speed and direction as was established by the last known keyframes ?

The easiest way to do that is by hand:

Just create a new keyframe (position presumably) or just drag the layer to where you think it should go: check the motion path to inform your guess.

Now twirl open the speed option, and drag the keyframe in time untill the speed between the last keyframe and the one you created lines up.

It’s not that hard to write an expression for this, but it seems a bit overkill, unless you want it to be mathematically correct.

[Filip Vandueren]

So, you want After effects to guess where a layer would end up if it would just continue at the same speed and direction as was established by the last known keyframes ?

The easiest way to do that is by hand:

Just create a new keyframe (position presumably) or just drag the layer to where you think it should go: check the motion path to inform your guess.

Now twirl open the speed option, and drag the keyframe in time untill the speed between the last keyframe and the one you created lines up.

It’s not that hard to write an expression for this, but it seems a bit overkill, unless you want it to be mathematically correct.

[Filip Vandueren]

instead of using the stroke filter, try using the scribble filter.

enable one of the “edge”-fill types instead of the inside -option.

then twirl open Edge-options and set the width to 1

Adjust the stroke-options to control how curve-y the wiggle is.

An unfortunate drawback is that Scribble always has an “angle”, and for some mask, this breaks the line.
You have to experiment with that angle-value as different angles give quite different results, you’ll see what I mean.

So, it does have some drawbacks, and depending on the shape of the path it might or might not work.

A different approach might be to use a soft roughen edges on a normal stroke

[Filip Vandueren]

You can always write a script that puts the current date in the text-content of a hidden text-layer, or the name of a null, then build your scripts from that….

but it’s a bit useless…

[Filip Vandueren]

You can always write a script that puts the current date in the text-content of a hidden text-layer, or the name of a null, then build your scripts from that….

but it’s a bit useless…