[:lonnie Busch]

Hi Steve, thanks for the post! I’ll check it out!

[:lonnie Busch]

I am creating a template that I can re-use. It involves 2 layers, one is just for the path, called layer P, the other is for all the animation controls, called A.

I have it set up that I can replace the path in P, which is referenced by layer A which has about 50 controls—sliders, angles, checkboxes— to animate properties of stroke and fill within layer A. And I have several instances of the same “path” in layer A and separate controls for each path, as well as global controls for all paths, all set up with expressions. That’s why I set up layer P so I would only have to replace the path in one place. And I want to be able to change the path to whatever I need. And everything is working perfectly.

But scaling the path has become problematic with sliders. It seems I can only Scale the “shape” itself, not the path. If I set up a controller on layer A Transform>Scale [using the Transform>Scale in layer P does nothing], that works fine, until I want to scale X and Y separately, which I do. But then I get distortion of the stroke because I am scaling the “shape” not the path itself. But, if I double click the path itself in layer P (path layer) I get a “bounding box” that I can then scale X and Y individually without distortion of the stroke.

I guess what I am saying is that I am trying to access that “bounding box” but I am very new to expressions and can’t even begin to figure that out or if it is even possible, or where to “place” the expression.

I thought about using a CRGreen script and using to attach the points of my main Path to a null to then use the null as my Path Scaler, but it seems you can only attach one point, and I would need to run the script each time I changed paths.

I am not sure that a complicated solution makes sense here as I can double click the path and scale it as I need to. Or I can animate the scale over all by using Transform>Scale in layer A. The only problem would arise if I wanted to animate scale on say X but not Y. That would be impossible without some kind of control.

I am just trying to streamline my rig so it works somewhat flawlessly, and that I can use it 6 months from now and not have to wonder how it works!

I hope this makes sense, Walter, and I appreciate your input.

[:lonnie Busch]

Walter, thank you for the quick reply. I apologize for not including in my post that I am using AE 5.5. I am hoping for some solution that will work with my version.

Thanks again!