[Josh Brine]

Thanks for the quick responses all!

I will check out those expressions when i get back on the computer tommorow and let you know, but for clarity here is what i am attempting to do, and how far i have gotten so far.

1) animated whiteboard animation is the goal.
– I created some drawings in AI,
– imported into after effects
– used trim paths on shape layers to animate the shapes being drawn,
– created null object and copied path of shape onto position of null to create an animated path, adjusted to match the speed of trim path. (at this point the null was offset due to different sizes of comp and AI images so in AI i made the artboard 1920×1080 same as the comp i was working in, and copied the anchor point data from the shape onto the null before copying the path, this resulted in a null perfectly following the shapes as they are drawn.

Here is the thing,

the idea is to have several images in a 1920×1080 final frame,) so i created a null in the master comp, and linked the position of the null in the precomp to it. however scaling the comp offsets the master null. so i wanted to compensate for that maybe with expressions (which i think is what you guys understood.) (the master null is what i want to attach the image of the pen onto so its size remains constant etc

there are other ideas such as creating smaller comps using the same technique so they dont have to be scaled down at all, however this limits my ability to adjust them on the fly.

[Josh Brine]

I Just Discovered a Script called Layer Chain, which automatically parents selected layers to the one above it.

using this script I can create the grid first, then create the child layers in their starting position, then layer them all automatically so they will animate with the circles!

[Josh Brine]

good to know thanks.

im guessing AE will be writing to and reading from the cache for playback etc? so it makes sense to be fast. would 256gb SSD be adequate in your opinion?

[Josh Brine]

Some options to consider

A) Sky Replacement: on a bright day, blow out the sky as suggested by Daniel, keeping your actor AND their white tshirt exposed correctly, then you will have a very easy post production sky replacement.

B) Secondary Colour Correction: Use a brightly coloured/distinguishable tshirt/colour that you can separate easily from the sky & everything else (if you are in a green field, dont use a green Tshirt) in post change its colour to white, for example, a bright red tshirt on an overcast day, using keylight you could key the red, get nice edges, invert the alpha channel, then use this as a track matte for an adjustment layer that will effect only that Tshirt, and use hue/saturation or levels etc etc to turn the tshirt white.

c) Have never used one but if the shot is locked and there is not alot of movement in the scene could perhaps a different matte help? (i honestly dont know)