[Kevin Camp]

i think animators should work for this, however for kerning, you will be limited to whole line ‘tracking’, so if you needed individual character kerning this may not work for you. however if you set the text layers’ kerning setting (in the character palette) to ‘optical’ rather than the default ‘metrics’ this can help a lot with creating more natural letter spacing.

to set it up with text animators, first twirl down the ‘master’ text layer and add a tracking animator from the ‘animate’ menu arrow. then add a scale animator the same way (you can add more properties if needed).

twirl closed then reopen the text properties of the master text. so you can see ‘more options’ and ‘animator 1’. in more options, you’ll probably want to set the grouping to ‘line’. then twirl down the animator>advanced and set the ‘based on’ to lines.

then drag the tracking and scale values to make sure the work the way you want.

next, select the more options and animator 1 and copy/paste them onto another text layer. twirl down the animator property to get to the trackinga nd scale properties, add expressions to each and then grab the expression pickwhip for each and drag it to the related property of the ‘master’ text layer. you should end up with an expression that looks something like this:

thisComp.layer("Master Text").text.animator("Animator 1").property.scale

now you can select the ‘more options’ and animator 1 property of that text layer and copy/paste them onto other text layers.

if you edit the tracking or scale animator of the master layer, the others should follow.

if you wanted to link the source text, you could use the same expression pickwhip method to link the source text of a slave layer to the source text of the master. the expression would look similar to this:

thisComp.layer("Master Text").text.sourceText

then you can select the slave layer’s source text property, choose edit>copy expression only, slect the other slave layers and paste.

now when you edit the master source text, all will update.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

you’ll get long save times in projects that have lots of footage or image layers, and that can be a really killer for ae’s ‘render multiple frames simultaneously’ option.

you may be able to reduce the project size by choosing file>remove unused footage, which will remove any files that are not used in any comps within the project.

or you can get more extreme by selecting the comp that you need to render, and choose file>reduce project, which will remove all comps and files that are used in the selected comp(s). obviously, you may want to save that off as a separate project after reducing it.

if you are using layered photoshop files with lots of layers, but only use a few of those layers, then you may still experience long save times, as it seems like ae still has to load the entire photoshop file just to get a few layers… i can’t say this is true, but i have notice that projects that have used large photoshop files have often exhibited longer save times.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

doh!

no doubt pedro was asking for a animation curve… an easy way to record each keyframe is to add an expression to the property, keeping the default expression, then choose animation>keyframe assistant>convert expression to keyframes.

then you can select those keyframes and copy/paste them into a text file.

it won’t give you a calculation, but they may be able to use the keyframe data to match the animation you have in ae.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

you can’t do it with an expression, but you could write a script that could disable specific effects for selected layers, or something like that.

i think it would probably be faster to live with selecting a group of layers and then toggling the ‘fx’ switch in the switches panel on the timeline. granted that disables all effects for a layer, but it’s fast and easy.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

i agree with both filip and chris, text animators should do what you need, and you can use expressions to drive those, along with the source text if needed.

using a ‘master’ text precomp that get’s used multiple times within the main comp may also work.

i do a lot of versioning out of graphics at the 3 stations i work for, so i think i know what you’re facing. it would help to have a better understanding of how you expect these to work, and what all needs to change within the comp.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

you can save the curve data from the effect controls palette… not sure if the equation they need is in there, but you could give that a try — it makes sense that it would be, but i don’t know if the data will be the way they would expect it.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

if a separate alpha won’t work, then the easiest way would be to duplicate the comp, hide the layers to not be included in the alpha, then bring that duplicate into the original comp and use it either with the stencil alpha blending mode or with the preserve underlying transparency option.

my other two options are more tedious.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

the easiest way is probably to do a separate render for the matte… so render the rgb with all the layers how you have them now, then hide the background layer(s) or any layers that you don’t want in the alpha and then render the alpha channel.

you could potentially duplicate all the layers that you need to use in the alpha and move them to the bottom of the comp. then for all the layers above those layers click the ‘preserve underlying transparency’ option (it’s the ‘T’ between blending modes and track mattes in the modes panel on the timeline).

there is also a very slim possibility that using a bunch of set matte effects on a solid at the top of your comp could allow you to combine the alphas of your alpha layers to create a single matte layer that you could then use stencil alpha on to knock them all out. but that a long shot, since the set matte effect (like all compound effects in ae) will only look at the layer’s original (or pre-effect) alpha and the effect expects the layers to be the same size or you will get unexpected results.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

you are on the right path.

I think this does what you need

for(i=1+index;i<=thisComp.numLayers;i++){
if(thisComp.layer(i).inPoint <= time && thisComp.layer(i).outPoint >= time && thisComp.layer(i).active==true){
text.sourceText=thisComp.layer(i).name;
break;
}
}

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

can you set the blending mode of the foreground layer to ‘stencil alpha’?

that should use it’s alpha over all layer’s bellow it.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW