[Mike Foran]

Effing brilliant. If I might try to parse this so I understand what you are doing here, please let me know if I am getting it wrong.

– set a to the current layer index value
– set b to the total number of layers
– set a loop increasing i at each recursion from one over a until b
– set curLay to the name of the layer i
– check to see if the layer has an in point less than the current time
– if so display the name

What does the “break” command do?

Thanks for taking the time to do that!!

[Mike Foran]

I should add: I would also be interested in an alternative script that would create a new light emitter layer for each shape path in the source, each with it’s own motion path pulled from that shape. Thanks for any help.

[Mike Foran]

Jumping in late here… was this issue ever resolved? I am working on a project with a lot of complex AI imports that need to have shapes for some things and masks for 3D strokes. It’s very time consuming to go through and create all the masks and individually link them to the shape paths. This seems like an obvious script to make but I can’t find one anywhere. I’d do it myself but I haven’t really gotten into scripting.

[Mike Foran]

I think perhaps a bit of both. I have several objectives in approaching the problem this way. One, as I discussed, is that I want to control each object independently while still maintaining the general orbit. Another is that I would like to have an expression and (ideally) a controller that would automatically space the objects on the circumference depending on how many objects I have in play. In this way, no matter how many objects i need to manipulate, the expressions can accommodate automatically (or semi-automatically in the way it is set up here). It would be easy enough to parent my objects to a null with a camera and have them auto-orient to the camera. I could still manipulate their rotation independently. But want to be able to control a variable number of objects without having to manually place them.

That being said I am not sure I quite get what you are describing. Would you mind posting a project file with the technique?

[Mike Foran]

Yes, I would like to rotate the orbiting objects independently. If I parent them to a null they rotate with the null.

[Mike Foran]

Here, perhaps this will help. The controller has a slider for a ‘radius’ value, a slider for the number of items in the orbit, and separate angle controllers for x, y, and z axes. Each object in the orbit has this expression in the Position field:

radius = thisComp.layer(“Controller”).effect(“Radius”)(“Slider”);

xangle = degreesToRadians(thisComp.layer(“Controller”).effect(“Rotation x”)(“Angle”));
yangle = degreesToRadians(thisComp.layer(“Controller”).effect(“Rotation y”)(“Angle”));
zangle = degreesToRadians(thisComp.layer(“Controller”).effect(“Rotation z”)(“Angle”));

offset = degreesToRadians(index * (360/thisComp.layer(“Controller”).effect(“Number of Items”)(“Slider”)))

x = thisComp.layer(“Controller”).transform.position[0] – (radius* Math.cos(yangle – offset));
y = thisComp.layer(“Controller”).transform.position[1] – (radius* Math.sin(xangle – offset));
z = thisComp.layer(“Controller”).transform.position[2] + (radius* Math.sin(zangle – offset));

[x,y,z];

-Mike

[Mike Foran]

Yes, I do. What I really need is just an answer about whether this is the expected behavior. If not, it it probably another issue in my system.

[Mike Foran]

As a follow up here is an image illustrating the issue I am having: https://www.dropbox.com/s/infhpls3xelmybg/BDC_Issues.jpg

I should also add, CS6 under Windows 7.

If anyone has some experience with this I would be most appreciative.

[Mike Foran]

Yes, that was it. Thanks so much! this really works and now I can really start animating.

[Mike Foran]

Ugh. Well every solution poses new problems. All of the wheel questions I have been asking have been are so that I can create a controller for a wheel in Element 3D. So with Dan’s help I now have a wheel controller that automatically rotates nicely along a path and can be oriented from it’s base. Here’s my test project: https://www.dropbox.com/s/0d3jtyll0bpxwpa/Rolling%203D%20Wheel.4.aep

If you turn off the Element layer (or if you don’t have Element installed) You can see the control wheel(s) are working quite nicely. My problem arises when I try to orient the Element model to match the controller. As you can see it just starts wobbling all over the place when I start to mess with the orientation.

Can anyone figure why is this happening? This is really the last hurdle.