[Joel Slabaugh]

It sounds like you can click the “collapse transformations button” on your precomp and it will do what you want. That button effectively uses the current comp camera attributes within the precomp and ignores whatever camera is in the precomp. It is located on the layer properties in between the “shy” button and the quality and sampling button and looks kind of like an asterisk.

Check out Video Copilot’s precompose script if the collapse transformations button doesn’t do it for you.
https://www.videocopilot.net/blog/2014/08/free-script-3d-pre-compose-tutorial/

[Joel Slabaugh]

I see. If the scaling isn’t an issue i’d just setup a single circle as you’ve done, by “hand.” You could do this through parenting and rotating by 360degrees/18videos and add each new video to the parent as you rotate it in increments. Once that is complete you could precompose them all, and then duplicate the layer as many times as you want and do a consecutive parenting on those new layers. Scale them all up at the same time and you’ve got a bunch of circles of videos expanding as far as you want. Check the continuously rasterize button to make them all as clean as possible.

[Joel Slabaugh]

Can you animate the video itself to spin in the opposite direction?

[Joel Slabaugh]

Can i help with any direction on how i have it setup? Maybe i can add some notes for what i was thinking of accomplishing when writing the expressions…
Btw, i really appreciate your motionscript.com site. Very helpful and user friendly. Many thanks.

[Joel Slabaugh]

Dan, do you think it has to do with my camera being parented? Maybe fromComp doesn’t take the camera’s correct position as it is.

[Joel Slabaugh]

Thanks for the response, Dan.

I did try that and it doesn’t seem to align things. I calculate the position of the 3d layer so that i can add the offset to just the x value. I’m sure there’s a cleaner way to do that, or even one that actually works. HA
I attached a cleaned up project file so the basics are included. Basically the goal is the pink layers in TIMELINE are the days and as you duplicate them they should extend along the timeline incrementally as you duplicate. Currently they do except for the position. They move a little when you move the camera around so it’s clear there’s some sort of connection. But when you move to the other side of the timeline they don’t follow the rotation at all so it seems the coordinate space must be wrong.

8898_timelinetest.aep.zip

[Joel Slabaugh]

Thanks for the response Edward. I’ve sent the file to your email.

[Joel Slabaugh]

I’m actually referring to the display through the kona card onto the Panasonic. I can get the computer monitor displays to match up between FCP and AE just not the monitor output to the Panasonic reference monitor.

However, i did not find that solution you are talking about so i will search for that and see if that changes anything. Thanks!

[Joel Slabaugh]

I’d take some dynamite for sure! Or even a bat or golf club!

[Joel Slabaugh]

Thanks for the information. I’m just critiquing my editing and looking for ways to increase my speed and i’ve realized I spend a lot of time scrolling around my timeline and having to carefully select the scroll bar or switch to the hand tool eats up precious time. My work in after effects/photoshop feels so much freer because of this basic function with the spacebar/hand tool toggle.