Kevin Camp
Forum Replies Created
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i don’t have an answer to the issue, but if you haven’t already filed a bug report with adobe, here’s the link:
https://www.adobe.com/products/wishform.html
you’ve done a good job documenting the issue, and i thin that will help them track down the bug.you might also post in adobe’s after effects forum, several of the programmers that work on after effects frequent that forum, and they may be able to give you a workaround or further insight in the issue until the bug is fixed.
https://forums.adobe.com/community/aftereffects_general_discussionKevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
likely used newton:
https://www.motionboutique.com/newton/
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
pretty easy with a text animator…
I’ll start with position:
- twirl down the text options for the text layer that you want to animate, click the arrow button next to the the word ‘animate’ and choose ‘position’ from the menu list.
- from the ‘add’ menu next to ‘animator 1’ that was just created, choose selector>wiggly.
- in the ‘position’ property below the wiggly selector enter a value (like 500,500), this will be the number of pixels that the letters will be dispersed. the letters should be pretty random now, and if you scrub the timeline, they should be swarming around.
- to get control of the swarm, twirl down the wiggly selector and key frame the max amount to go from 100% to 0% and the min amount to go from -100% to 0%. the letters should now fly around and then come together to form a word.
for the opacity, you can simply animate the opacity property for the text layer to go from 0 to 100%.
or, if you wanted the letters to start appearing one by one, you could use a second animator:
- select the text layer name, then click the animate menu again, choosing ‘opacity’ this time. you should get a second animator, if not delete the opacity property from the first animator, select the layer name and try again.
- set that opacity value to 0
- twirl down the range selector properties, and key frame the offset to go from 0 to 100%.
- if you want the characters to appear randomly vs in order, twirl down the advanced properties and set ‘random order’ to on.
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
[Sam Burrough] “d = length (thisComp.layer(“Camera 1″).toWorld([0,0,0]),toWorld(anchorPoint));”
in that line of your expression, try changing thisComp to the comp(“NAME OF COMP WITH CAMERA”), where you replace [NAME OF COMP WITH CAMERA] with the name of your comp that has the camera and the pre-comp in it.
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
i’ve pretty much learned everything i know about expression from reading posts on this site (and asking a few questions), and from motionsript.com and from jjgifford.com/expressions/basics/index.html
on motionscript.com, a good place to start is the mastering expressionssection.
there’s a fair amount of overlap between that mastering expression section and jj gifford’s expression basics, but they are both good places to start.
i’m pretty sure that lynda.com has some good tutorials on expression too — i’m not sure if this is true everywhere, but where i live, if you have a county library card, you get access to lynda.com for free…
in addition to learning expressions strictly for after effects, i find it’s pretty easy to get answers to java-specific questions online too, sites like w3schools.com are good resources for basic java skills that can help with developing more complex expressions.
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
you would need to have a way to determine what time the bargraph layer’s y-scale hits 10%.
if you used 2 linear keyframes for the bargraph scale animation, you can calculate the time it would reach 10% (or any percentage)…
try this:
target = thisComp.layer("BARGRAPH");
trigger = 10; // value in %
minScale = 0; // value in %
maxScale = 100; // value in %
dur = .5; // value in seconds
tStart = target.scale.key(1).time + ( trigger / 100 ) * ( target.scale.key(2).time - target.scale.key(1).time );
if ( target.scale[1] > trigger ) s = linear( time, tStart, tStart + dur, minScale, maxScale) else s = 0;
[ s, s ]
if you are using ease keyframes, it will be tougher….Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
i’m not sure how many lines you have, but i think this could work for several lines…
- type the most lines that you think you wound need into a text layer.
- twirl down the text layer properties, click the little ‘animation’ menu arrow (to the right of the ‘text’ properties) and choose ‘position’
- in the position property that pops up, set the x value to some thing arbitrary (maybe 200 or 400).
- then twirl down the range selector properties and then the advanced properties.
- in the advanced properties set based on to ‘lines’, set units to ‘index’ and shape to ‘ramp up’.
- in the range selector properties set the offset to .5.
your lines show now be staggered. to adjust the amount of staggering, adjust the x value of the position animator to line up with the amount of skewing that you need.
i thin you should be able to keep that amount of stagger regardless of the number of lines you type, as long as the number of lines does not exceed the ‘end’ value in the range selector — that’s why you should start with the maximum number of lines that you think you need at the beginning. you can increase (or decrease) the ‘end’ value, but you will need to adjust the x value to maintain the skew/stagger.
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
you might be able to link the distance between the pre-comp and the camera (in the main comp) to the stroke values in the pre-comp.
if you post the expression, we could take a look…
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
you could try making the time related to the inPoint of the layer rather than just comp time….
try this:
var holdTime = 2;
t = Math.max( 0, time - inPoint );
seedRandom(Math.floor(t/holdTime), timeless = true);
random(0,9);
the 2 second holdTime should start from the inPoint of the layer rather than the start of the comp, so you should be able slide them in the timeline to offset the timings of the number changes between text layers.Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
if you are talking about skewing the ‘bounding box’ of area/paragraph text, there isn’t a way to do that in ae.
you might be able to use a position text animator to reposition the lines of text to get the ‘justification’ angle that you are looking for.
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW