[Mike Clasby]

Don’t know if I read you correctly but here’s how to loops clips and comps.

1) Loop a Clip

If you want an individual file to loop like a sound file that’s a “beep”, then as soon as you import it, in the Project Window, right-click and Interpret Footage>Man> and ten, set the “Loop” to 10 or 20 or however many times you think you’ll need it to loop, then the clip will be 10 or 20 times longer with the sound… “beep, beep, beep, beep, beep… etc.

If that clip is already down in the timeline, you’ll see a pale extension of it off to the right, just drag the endpoint out to the right, you’ll see what I mean.

2) Loop a Composition

Say you have a comp with the 40 short clips that you then want to loop that comp.
Put that comp in the main comp (or select those 40 layers and then Layer>Precompose (move all attributes, Open comp (if you think you might need to make changes)).

Anyway with those 40 sounds in one comp, and you want to loop it, select the comp layer, Layer>Enable Time Remapping, then add this expression to Time Remapping (Copy the expression, Alt-Click the Time Remapping Stopwatch, Paste). Here’s the expression to copy/paste:

loopOutDuration(“cycle”)

Don’t move those two keyframes that were created by time remapping or you’ll speedup/slowdown the comp. The loop expression above loops any property with at least two keyframes.

Now you still have to drag that endpoint out to the right but that comp will loop indefinitely.

Is this what you’re trying to do?

For the low-down on loop expressions, there are four kinds I know of, see the comp named “Intro” in the downloadable project, here:

https://library.creativecow.net/articles/ebberts_dan/layer_looping.php

Dan uses loop in animating a walk cycle.

[Mike Clasby]

Think you missed it, cause it works for me on 6.5. Just keep those that Collapse Tranormations swithed on and keep on dancin’.

[Mike Clasby]

Precomping is the fix. Precomp the butterfly (with it’s up and down movement) then when you animate the precomp layer by rotating its X to get it on it’s side, the butterfly will still move relative to it’s body.

So do the side-roll and basic movements to the precomp layer but in the main comp, and animate the wing flap and relative up/down in the precomp.

Be sure an turn on the collapse transformations icon when you make that precomp layer 3D in the main comp.

[Mike Clasby]

How about two position keyframes?

[Mike Clasby]

Wow, AE4, I dunno many folks that still have that on their computers, so I can’t test directly, but…

Does AE4 have, Animation>Keyframe Assistant>Sequence Layers ? That can do mass fade ins.

Are there presets in AE4, Animation>Apply Animation Preset? You could make a preset from a keyframed setup, then apply it.

Otherwise I think you have to keyframe each layer manually.

[Mike Clasby]

Trapcode Particular
Building Up Particles
https://www.creativecow.net/articles/lee_james/particle_build_up/index.html

Particle Illusion (30 day fully functional trial, methinks)
Disintegrating People and Other Things
https://www.creativecow.net/articles/deane_elvis/disintegratePeople/index.html

You can also try a combo of CC Ball Action (Grid spacing 0, animate scatter) + Scatterize + CC Flo Motion.

[Mike Clasby]

These are from a search for “rain drop”, there are more:

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/2/918180

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/2/916523

[Mike Clasby]

Yikes, I forgot a width to height change on line 15, it should be this:

startVal = random()*this_comp.height;

And the whole expression, this:

tMin = .5; //minimum segment duration
tMax = 2; //maximum segment duration

end = 0;
j = 0;
while (time >= end){
j++;
seedRandom(j,true);
start = end;
end += random(tMin,tMax);
}
endVal = random(thisComp.height);
seedRandom(j – 1,true);
y = random(); //this is a throw-away value
startVal = random()*this_comp.height;
y = ease(time,start,end,startVal,endVal);
[value[0], y]

[Mike Clasby]

Looks like a perfect think for CS3’s Shape layers with their repeaters and such. Have you seen Jerzy’s tut, here;

https://library.creativecow.net/articles/drozda_jerzy/CEShapeExtruder/Video/shape_extruder.html

[Mike Clasby]

This seems to work on a horizontal line’s position:

tMin = .5; //minimum segment duration
tMax = 2; //maximum segment duration

end = 0;
j = 0;
while (time >= end){
j++;
seedRandom(j,true);
start = end;
end += random(tMin,tMax);
}
endVal = random(thisComp.height);
seedRandom(j – 1,true);
y = random(); //this is a throw-away value
startVal = random()*this_comp.width;
y = ease(time,start,end,startVal,endVal);
[value[0], y]

I just replaced the x’s with y’s (lines 14, 16, and 17). Then in line 17 “value[0]” means use the x value, and their places are reversed since the left side is the x, and where the y is in line 17 is the y value (it was value[1] meaning use the y value).

Also I changed the “width” in line 12 to “height”, so the lines stay within the screen:

endVal = random(thisComp.width);

to

endVal = random(thisComp.height);

So in case I was vague above,
value[0] is the x value
and value[1] is the y value
and value[2] is the z value