[Mike Clasby]

Thanks, Dan, that should do it.

[Mike Clasby]

I’m sorry, the expression above is on the Animator 2, Position Stopwatch, not on the tracking.

The expression is telling the position to adjust to the amount of tracking in Animator 1.

My bad.

[Mike Clasby]

I see what you mean, the tracking in AE6.5 does the same thing, pushing the letters right from a stationary first letter.

For tracking I used this expression on Animator 1, Tracking Amount (Alt Click the Tracking Amount Stopwatch and Paste in the expression). There also needs to be an Animator 2 (Position):

temp = text.animator(“Animator 1”).property.trackingAmount;
m = 1; // multiplier, use this to tweak center
[ – temp * m, value[1]]

The expression tells the text to move the position in the minus X direction, the same amount as the tracking.

The “m” in line two is what I call multiplier, it adjusts where the center of your tracking is and happens to be “how many letters are to the left of the center letter”. In otherwords, If there are three letters in the word you want to track evenly, m = 1 (1 letter to the left of the center letter) will make it work perfectly. If there are seven letters in the word, m = 3 (3 letters are to the left of the center letter). For a word with 8 letters, m = 3.5 works perfectly. There is probably a way to do this with expressions and a little math, but I don’t know how to find out how many letters there is in the word via expressions, so you need to do a little math to make “m” center your tracking spread.

I got the original expression by creating an Animator 1 (clicking the little Triangle next to “Animate”>Tracking, then creating a second Animator, Animate>Position. Then pickwhipping the Position to the tracking and making it X only (replacing the Y “temp” with “value[1]” in line 2). I changed the X temp to – temp. I then added that whole ” * m” (times m) for a multiplier to make it center correctly. Counting the number of letters to the left or right of the center letter solves that.

You could have done this with Anchor Point instead of Position but that would have messed up any rotation you might want to add.

Good luck.

[Mike Clasby]

Ok, you could use my 2D setup in a limited 3D way. Just add that comp with the my 2D solution to you 3D comp (or precomp the 2D elements). Make that precomp 3D. Now add a camera. When you rotate the Left Wire in the 2D comp, it will work up in your 3D comp, but it will only swing in that 3D Z plane. If you move the anchor point of the precomp in the 3D comp to the level of where the wires attach, you can now rotate it’s X rotation to get it to rotate on that plane. So you can move it on two axis.

For a real 3D solution ask over at the AE Expression Forum, listed in my first post.

[Mike Clasby]

Ooops! I didn’t see you wanted 3D, mine is a 2D solution. You’d better go ask at the Cow Expression Forum.

[Mike Clasby]

Ok, if the wires are rigid, try this.

Overview: Moving Anchor Points, parenting and a few expressions.

I made my 2D Sign from a red Solid (300×200). The wires are two blue solids (I made one and Duplicated it) 4 pixels wide and 300 pixels in height.

Move (drag) the sign into position, and the wires where you want them to start (hanging straight up and down I assumed). With the Pan behind Toll, move the anchor points of the wires to the top of each wire. And move the anchor point of the Sign to the top right corner (or where the Right Wire connects to the sign. When I say left and right I mean as I see the screen.

Add a Null (Layer>New>Null Object) and move it so that it’s anchor point was over the top of the left wire (where the wire’s anchor point was moved to).

Make the Null the parent of the two wire layers (Parent pickwhip (looks like @) from the wire to the null). Make the Right Wire the parent of the Sign.

So the layers look like this:

LAYERS PARENT
1 – Null 1 1. Null 1
2 – Left Wire 1. Null 1
3 – Right Wire 3. Right Wire
4 – Sign

Add these expressions. To the Right Wire’s Rotation, “R” brings up the Rotation Stopwatch, (Alt Click the Rotation Stopwatch and Paste it in):

thisComp.layer(“Left Wire”).rotation

You could have also gotten this by Alt clicking the Right Wire’s Rotation stopwatch then pickwhipping to the Left Wire’s Rotation Stopwatch. The expression just tells the Right Wire to use the left Wire’s Rotation as it’s own.

Add this expression to the Sign’s Rotation:

– thisComp.layer(“Left Wire”).rotation

That just tells the Sign to rotate equally but opposite of the left wire, again created with the pickwhip from Sign’s rotation with the left wire’s rotation, then adding a minus sign in front of the express (to get the opposite rotation).

Now don’t touch the null (lock and shy it if you like).

If you rotate the left wire, the second layer’s rotation, the whole setup will make the sign swing left and right with the wires staying attached as they should.

If you want to find an expression solution ask here:

https://forums.creativecow.net/viewforum/227

[Mike Clasby]

Have you seen Aharon’s tuts on Displacement Maps? Click his head on the main AE page and scroll down to the tutorial, Displacement Mapping Part 1: The Basics , there are two more. Getting the displacement effect to work is all about creating the right gradient or grayscale footage that does what you want. You can use other channels, like red, or green, they might work on your hills. Aharon’s tuts really show you how the gradients effect the look. He walks though the effect in detail and it will take awhile for you to get through it, but when done, you will know how to use Displacement Maps.

Actually I just looked at the tuts and Displacement Mapping Part 3: Text and Time is what you want. The first half covers displacing text, he uses water rippling on a beach. You’ll see how he treats the footage to get the look he wants. He duplicated his footage and then desaturated it with Hue/Saturation, then he used Levels to crush the colors to get black and white, then blurred slightly. It’s all there in tut 3 for you to see. Maybe you can use the same technique with your hill footage.

If part 3 doesn’t make sense go back to parts 1 & 2.

[Mike Clasby]

Is the gif layer below the avi? If so the video is blocking the gif. Drag the gif to the top of the stack and it will be seen first.

Or…

Is the gif layer long enough? Maybe your down the timeline and the gif is only a few frames long. Drag the right hand edge of the layer to the right to lengthen it.

[Mike Clasby]

How do you want to apply the Motion Sketch Data to a camera, seems like an expression to convert Motion Sketch’s x to the camera’s z is possible, do you want to do something like that?

It would be something like this (Motion Skectch was used on Black Solid 1):

temp = thisComp.layer(“Black Solid 1”).position;
[value[0], temp[1],temp[0]]

This leaves the camera’s x at whatever you set it (value[0]) and makes the camera’s z be the same as the layer that got motion sketch applied (I used a Black Solid 1, it’s x. So the Camera Z now equals the motion sketch x.

If you want to make the z flight 10 times longer, add a *10 (times 10) to that z temp, the last one in the last line, making this expression:

temp = thisComp.layer(“Black Solid 1”).position;
[value[0], temp[1],temp[0]*10]

temp[1] is the Motion Sketch’s Y value and is what the camera’s Y will be in the expression.

Or… You could use Motion Sketch on a really large layer to get the flight you want.

temp [0] is the motion sketch x values, temp[1] is the Motion Sketch Y values. Depending where you put them in the array (I think it’s called), will be the x ,y or z of the camera position.

Whatta ya wanna do?

[Mike Clasby]

Click on Aharon’s head on the main AE page and scroll down to Animating A Signature, Part II. See part 1 if your hsving trouble with part II.