[Joe Clay]

Randomly, I ended up helping a friend last night with a quick script to import text and scale values from a CSV for a tag cloud, and it was easy enough to modify to create this rough script. I’ve never created shape layers before, so I didn’t put in an actual shape yep, but this makes the layers, spaces them out by 10px, and starts the graph from 1,1080 in the corner (I set it up for an HD comp).

Here’s the script: https://www.dropbox.com/s/qyiuf90cxyifw9b/wbGrapher.jsx?dl=0

So to use it, you just run it and import your csv (I had to take your csv and modify it because csv’s don’t like decimals that have commas. 🙂 I used numbers to do it but I’m sure you can do it in Google Docs or Excel. You’ll need to do it in an editor that’s not a text file so it doesn’t remove the commas you need to split the data. Anyway, find and replace your commas with periods. And then take off the headings. So it should just be your numbers.

Then on the first shape layer, add your shape. You can put a simple circle and fill, or whatever you want. Then, copy everything under contents in the shape and select all the remaining layers and paste it. Then just put a null at 1,1080, and parent all of your layers to it. You can scale the null or whatever to change the graph. If you like you can also modify the script. You might want to add a multiplier to the y values. You can scale the null x and y differently, but it’ll stretch the contents of the shape of course.

I might change the script in the future, so if anyone comes along, hit me up here and I’ll relink a new one if it’s no longer there. I hope this helps!

Joe Clay
Workbench.tv

[Joe Clay]

True, but wouldn’t you need a script for anything meaningful? I mean you’d probably want separate layers or at least separate paths in a shape layer.

Joe Clay
Workbench.tv

[Joe Clay]

No problem! I hope it helps!

There’s also a script you can use to update new versions in a project, but for the most part our approach is easy enough to swap out manually. I usually don’t have more than 8 or 9 comps in a master. And the script lags with complex AEPs since it has to check everything in them. So manually became faster.

Maybe one of these days I’ll write a script that fits my workflow to autoupdate my masters…adding to my teuxdeux list now. 🙂

Joe Clay
Workbench.tv

[Joe Clay]

Ah. I see, it’s more for charts not so much graphs. I would be surprised if no one has made something that does that.

Joe Clay
Workbench.tv

[Joe Clay]

That, uh, sounds crazy. Unless you’re doing only a couple of projects your file is going to get huge and complicated—not to mention the single point of failure as you have mentioned.

I did a hefty group of large animations for a client and over that time we perfected a system to work as a team.

I’ve got a client folder in my dropbox. I make individual folders for each project and a main folder for the group, if there is one, for common elements. Then I have my AEPs with a master file and sub-files for sections of the project so multiple people can work on it at the same time.

If you’re curious about any more of it, I happened to have made a video on the topic showing my workflow.
https://workbench.tv/tutorials/2016-04-01_TeamWorkflow/

Joe Clay
Workbench.tv

[Joe Clay]

Looks like this might help you out:

https://aescripts.com/aeinfographics/

Joe Clay
Workbench.tv

[Joe Clay]

You can try an expression like this:
hue = 0;
sat = 1;
light = .5;
hsla = [hue,sat,light,1];
hsla = hsla + [((time/thisComp.frameDuration)%360)/360,0,0];
hslToRgb(hsla);

But that’s not the best way because it’s not easy to control or predict, but it’ll cycle through the hues. It’d be easier to use an effect that has a cycling type of property and put a time expression on that property like:

time*12

You could use the hue/sat effect to get something similar to the above expression. But the best way, if you’re looking to get specific hues is to use the old school Colorama effect. You can change the output cycle to use just the colors you’re looking for, and then you can put a time expression, like the one above, on the “Phase Shift” property. I hope that’s what you’re after!

Joe Clay
Workbench.tv

[Joe Clay]

Interesting. No problem, sorry, I think I’m on the latest version! I saved it back a version in case you want to check it out. It sounds like a project it’s better to not be involved in. 🙂

Joe Clay
Workbench.tv

[Joe Clay]

I’d just make custom shapes. It’s usually easier, and you don’t have to bother with trying to make Particular make something you need (and you usually need custom shapes for those anyway).

Joe Clay
Workbench.tv

[Joe Clay]

No problem! I actually do tutorials, and I ended up actually explaining this this week. So if you need any more info for some reason:
https://workbench.tv/tutorials/2016-06-03_UsingAerender/

Joe Clay
Workbench.tv