[Filip Vandueren]

So for the simple case (we don’t actually care what the value of the slider is, just that a keyframe occured), this expression for timeRemapping:

sl=effect("Slider Control")("Slider");
nearKey=sl.nearestKey(time);
nextKeyIndex = nearKey.index - (nearKey.time > time ? 1 : 0);
valueAtTime(sl.key(nextKeyIndex).time);

[Filip Vandueren]

Hi Stephane, are the keyframes only ever 1 and 0 ? That makes it a lot easier and faster, as we’d only need to check if a keyframe on the slider occured, not if it has passed an actual threshold (like if it’s animating from 3.2 to 0.66 and you need to know exactly when it hits the 1.0 value)

Or are there mulitple keyframes of 0, and you only want to progress to the next still only when the value actually flips to 1. etc.

[Filip Vandueren]

Of course, doing it with a script would be a lot easier.

Does your use-case exclude the possibility of running a script to get this outcome ?

[Filip Vandueren]

Hi Nil,

there’s a bug in Saber in that it doesn’t recognize anything you try to do to force your layer to be bigger (such as a grow bounds or simple choker before Sabre).

So the only option you have is to actually make your layer larger + scale down the masks.

You can select all the Masks and then transform them with Command-T.

Or copy them to a larger Solid Layer and apply the Saber there, that would be the better option.

[Filip Vandueren]

Hi Eric,

I’m sure you’re aware that the code in this form can only work for rectangular shapes, not for freeform polygons, But I think you are aware of this and you don’t mind the incorrect results if the nulls are not placed exactly.

That being said, your logic for getting the length of individual sides in percentages from the ratios is not correct:

//Ratio and total length

var ratio = boxWidth/boxHeight;

var totalLength = boxWidth*2 + boxHeight*2;

var bottomEdge = ratio/2;

var rightEdge = (1.0 – bottomEdge)/2

For example a square would have ratio 1, so both bottom-edge and right-edge would be 0.25;

while your code yields bottomEdge = 0.5 and rightEdge = 0.25

But when the box-ratio is 2, your bottomEdge becomes 1 and your rightEdge = 0 instead of 2/3 and 1/3.

so…

leftEdgeRatio = boxHeight/totalLength; // rightEdge is equal

bottomEdgeRatio = boxWidth/totalLength; // topEdge is equal

for your corners, you would add the edges together, for example 3/4 corner = leftEdgeRatio+bottomEdgeRatio+rightEdgeRatio; or leftEdgeRatio*2 + bottomEdgeRatio; (or equivalently, 1-topEdgeRatio)

[Filip Vandueren]

I would use expressions to copy the relative position changes of a pre-animated copy of the effect, which is locked and hidden.

I could be mistaken, but I don’t think that you can relocate a puppet pin after it has been placed without it acting as a distortion move.

[Filip Vandueren]

Hi Kevin,

A few downsides of using a textanimator: that solution would cause the cursor to follow the styling of the character, so it would become, bold, italic, change color, change fonts… together with the text.

And it can’t be visible while it is on a white space character (like you mentioned, that’s why the final character can’t be a space…)

I don’t really know of a simple method that combines the best of both approaches (sourceText vs text animator), the fact that the character off-set ignores white space is a real problem…

[Filip Vandueren]

If the motion is not too erratic, You could try lowering the framerate of the comp to just a few fps, convert to keyframes and then reset the framerate, you’ll wind up with a fraction of the keyframes, which -again depending on the smoothness of the animation- could suffice to describe the required motion

[Filip Vandueren]

Null to Path can work on both Masks and Shape Paths.

So you can apply it directly into your shape, then make sure that you convert the expressions to keyframes before exporting

[Filip Vandueren]

Trapcode 3D stroke comes to mind as a quick fix if you have it.

An alternative would be to construct it out of 3D Nulls and use some shapes with Path to Nulls script, (so the lines would be drawn in 2D, with their positions controlled by 3D points) but that’s trickier with curves than with straight lines.

I believe this will be easier to just make in cinema4D(lite) instead of in after effects with the C4D renderer to add simple extrusion to shapes ?