[Filip Vandueren]

I’m pretty sure the problem is that you are adding alpha values – which are floats -together and then using that total as an index to an array – which expects an integer.

Javascript doesn’t really differentiate between Integers and Floats, they are both of class Number but javascript might display something like 1.999999999999 as 2, but that would fail as an array index.

try this:

x=parseInt(total-1);

or this:

x=Math.round(total-1);

and it will work.

[Filip Vandueren]

That would need a (possibly simple), but bespoke script.
It depends on how easily you can programmatically determine the keyframe to change.

For example is it always the 2nd keyframe ?, Does the Null always have the same name, or does it always use the same ‘Solid’ as a source (which would happen if you ahve always copy pasted or duplicated it)

If it’s more a case of a human can see at a glance which keyframe it would be in the project, but a stupid computer can’t using simple rules, then it’s not possible with scripting.

[Filip Vandueren]

You would either.use the linear() method on the intermediate lines to calculate intermediate colors.

so line 1’s stroke color is something like;

thisComp.layer("control").effect("color A")("Color")

line 10’s stroke color is:

thisComp.layer("control").effect("color B")("Color")

the 9 lines in between have:

percentage=50;
linear(percentage,0,100,
    thisComp.layer("control").effect("color A")("Color"),
    thisComp.layer("control").effect("color B")("Color")
);

With percentages 10,20,30,40,…90

OR,

you make your artwork in grayscales from dark to light and use CC Toner to map those grayscales to up to 5 tones. For an even distribution of 4 colors I would use colors between 0 and 80% gray and disregard the 5th swatch of Toner Pentone mode

[Filip Vandueren]

I think you would better use Trapcode Form, which creates the Particles once at the start of the layer and keeps them alive infinitely, instead of keeping spawning 80 flowers a second, at least that’s not what the example looks like.

[Filip Vandueren]

Correct I used the longets line,

currently there is no (convenient) way to retrieve the actual dimensions of a text-box using expressions.

but you could hard-code it like

maxWidth = 3900;

One approach of finding out the (approximate) actual width of a textbox I can think of, is to set the value of the sourceText (at a certain time) to:

if (time==-0.01) {
    txt="|".repeat(10000);
    style.setTracking(-250).setFontSize(10).setText(txt);
} else { value }

then

thisComp.layer("txt").sourceRectAtTime(-0.01).width;

would be a pretty accurate width.

but that’s just purely academical and not very practical (as 90% of my solutions 😉 )

[Filip Vandueren]

Hi Lance,

You can find an example project of mine here:

https://imgur.com/gallery/uh1GbDu

https://we.tl/t-3X3wBdYWIJ

[Filip Vandueren]

Hi John,

maybe this project of mine from a while ago (I can’t find the original question here on the cow) can help, I don’t have the time right now to go deeper into it:

https://we.tl/t-t2joKsjd4q

The original question was about squeezing a ball into a cavern, and I remember I made some mehtod that “felt” the distance to the walls by trial and error / refining over a few iterating guesses untill the radius comformed.

[Filip Vandueren]

Motion developper has this library:

https://motiondeveloper.com/tools/ekeys

which allows you to do “keyframe”-like including easing animation via expressions instead of doing multiple linears/eases…

[Filip Vandueren]

Once a project is saved it has a thisProject.fullPath

So maybe something like this:

fp = thisProject.fullPath.toString();
hashCode = function(str) {
  var hash = 0, i, chr;
  if (str.length === 0) return hash;
  for (i = 0; i < str.length; i++) {
    chr   = str.charCodeAt(i);
    hash  = ((hash << 5) - hash) + chr;
    hash |= 0; // Convert to 32bit integer
  }
  return hash;
};
hashCode(fp)

That would change if you move the project to a different folder too though, so you might want to extract just the filename first ?

Hashing function I found here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7616461/generate-a-hash-from-string-in-javascript

[Filip Vandueren]

Color stabilizer, in combination with what you mentioned (echo set to lighten) but also with a time difference matte so it is less pronounced in the places where there is a lot of local movement, this should even out the lumininance difference of say a wall, while not smudging the actual motion that’s happening