[Greg Digenti]

That’s an interesting concept, but I’d really like to figure out how to make this expression work. I know it has to be possible, and it would be really helpful to me and I imagine a lot of other people.

I’m surprised Dan Ebberts hasn’t chimed in here, it seems right up his alley. It’s going to require some pretty tricky math to accommodate the layer rotation, but I know he can probably pretty easily wrap his brain around it.

[Greg Digenti]

Sorry to keep responding to my own post, but I feel like I’m getting close so I thought I’d post this in case it helps anyone reading this.

What I’ve done is added a Null Object to the scene, and linked its Position property to the Anchor Point property using the pickwhip.

I then added this code to the Position property of the layer:

tempX=thisComp.layer(“Null 1”).transform.position[0];
tempY=thisComp.layer(“Null 1”).transform.position[1];
x=tempX+571; //571 is the width of the comp – the width of the layer
y=tempY+637.5; //637.5 is the height of comp – the height of the layer
[x,y]

It works perfectly until I rotate the layer, at which point when I move the Anchor Point, the layer also shifts position.

[Greg Digenti]

I’ve noticed that using the pan behind tool works exactly how I need the expression to work. It adjusts the Position of the layer to counteract the movement of the Anchor Point. If I could just figure out how to recreate this action with an expression.

[Greg Digenti]

Well, your last instructions seemed a bit incomplete since none of the code pointed outside the current comp, so what I did was add a null within the puppet comp which would control the pin (using your last expression), then used the first expression I posted to control that NULL using the null outside the comp (which is maybe what you intended in the first place).

It seems kind of like a long way to go, but so far it appears to be working exactly as I wanted it to.

Thanks!

[Greg Digenti]

Okay I tried that, and unfortunately it’s even worse. It pushes the puppet pin so far down and to the left of the location of the Null, I can barely control its movement.

Any other thoughts?

[Greg Digenti]

Sorry, my last response was made before I realized anyone had responded to my post. Let me try your suggestion and I’ll get back to you. Thanks!

[Greg Digenti]

If this helps, what I’m trying to animate is a person I’ve made out of several pieces (arms, head, torso, legs, etc) and it appears that the position of each puppet tool pin is based on the size of the part that it’s attached to, rather than the overall comp. Not sure how to compensate for this?

[Greg Digenti]

Okay, your method seems to work very well. I’ll have to continue to look into why my method is not working. I think it may have something to do with how close the camera itself is to the layer, as well as how high the Blur Level is set to.

Thanks for your help.

[Greg Digenti]

Thanks for your response, but I was hoping someone could tell me why my method isn’t working for this project. I’m using the preferred method that should very accurately give me the proper focal distance, since I’m actually visibly aligning the focal distance with the item to be in focus, yet it’s not coming into focus as it should. Any thoughts on this?

[Greg Digenti]

It seems that the info in this thread should have fixed an issue that I’m having, unfortunately it doesn’t.

Usually when I’m trying to focus on a 3D layer, I simply view it from above and adjust the focal distance until it’s even with the layer I want to be in focus. This has always worked for me in the past, but for some reason in this particular project, the layer is EXTREMELY blurry when I use this method and I can’t figure out why.

Any ideas on something I may be missing? Thanks in advance.