[Filip Vandueren]

Give the head’s rotation this expression:

thisComp.layer("torso").transform.rotation.valueAtTime(time - thisComp.frameDuration);

[Filip Vandueren]

Hi Ron, judging from the number of expressions questions that pop up here in the last few days, I’m guessing people have a harder time finding the other forum in the new layout.

… As Kieran just pointed out while I was typing 🙂

[Filip Vandueren]

What property are you applying this expression to ?

[Filip Vandueren]

Don’t use MP4’s with H264 codec as source footage.
Convert them first to ProRes or DnxHD or your other preferred codec that doesn’t use interframe compression.

[Filip Vandueren]

How many of those sliders/combinations are there, I’m no entirely clear on why you would need that many precomps ?

Anyway, you just need to setup some logic to determine the end-position first, then use a linear() or ease() function to do the animation…

For example with a switch statement:

sl=thisComp.layer("Null 1").effect("Slider Control")("Slider").value;
startPos=[100,100];
switch(sl) {
	case 1:
		endPos = [200,200];
		break;
	case 2:
		endPos = [200,300];
		break;
	case 3:
		endPos = [300,200];
		break;
	default:
		endPos = startPos;
}
ease(time, 1, 3, startPos, endPos);

[Filip Vandueren]

the frequency of .3 doesn’t fit exactly in 3 seconds. But 0.333333 would.

To be absolutley sure, you might want to express the undulations as 1 undulation over the entire comp’s time like this:

xFreq = 1 / thisComp.duration; 

(or simply 1/3 in this case)

[Filip Vandueren]

If I understand correctly what you want to achieve with rotation,
you could try by putting the position expression on the anchorPoint instead of position.

all the layers will orbit the central point

[Filip Vandueren]

Well, VLC shows the colors differently than quicktime player or safari/Chrome would.

It appears VLC does no color conversion.

A huge problem however is that quicktime encodes WRONG gamma numbers into ProRes by default, and that Adobe is too stubborn to fix it.

So while Prores is supposed to be Rec709 with a gamma 2.4, and you work in rec709, and you render in rec709, and you re-import and interpret it as rec709… It’ll be still woring.

By default they’ll be encoded with trnasfer-function ITU-R BT.709, (scene referred camera profile) which has an effective gamma closer to 1.9

Now, even if you fix that (for example with this tool: https://github.com/bbc/qtff-parameter-editor) Adobe Media encoder will totally disregard that info when you re-encode video through it.

[Filip Vandueren]

I talked about a script to “freeze” the expression to speed things up after you’ve duplicated the layers

here are three of my scripts I us very often:

https://we.tl/t-ZVNS5Lj0c9

FV expr 2 KF @ KFs.jsx

Equivalent to “convert expression to keyframes”, but only operates on exisiting keyframes.
Because a simple expression like “value/2” doesn’t need to create 1 keyframe per frame for the entire comp.

FV expr 2 KF @ time.jsx

Only applies the current outcome value of the expression to “now” (possibly creating a keyframe),
then disables then expression. -> Ideal for this case where the calculation of the positions is always the same value, but is an expensive calculation

enable all expressions.js

speaks for itself

[Filip Vandueren]

Here’s my recipe:

duplicate the text-layer below your original
give it the box color
add a textanimator"Character Value" to the copy:
Character Alignment: Center
Character Value: 61
This will replace every character with a "="
You can also choose value:79, which will be a "O" rounder edges
Add a minimax effect:
operation: Maximum
Radius: 30 (something like 50-60% of your textlayer's fontsize)
Channel: Alpha and Color

That’s it… You can also do two minimax effects: 1 for vertical and 1 for horizontal.

and experiment with different values for character value like 43 “+” or 47 “/” or 124 for “|” etc.

If you change font or text or layout, just copy the textproperty from the toplayer to the bottom and it’ll line up again.