[Mitch Mann]

Yeah, the problem there is that when you change a multiple of time with a slider, it’ll give you that new different multiple counted up from the beginning. So it’ll work fine when its always that same number, but when you change it, it’ll recalculate weirdly from the beginning and result in strangely skipping frames. Its not cumulative unfortunately. Maybe Dan has a solution, I don’t know.

[Mitch Mann]

You could just multiply the time by the slider amount. That would work for using a different speed, but you’d run into weird problems if you animated the slider value.

[Mitch Mann]

Andy- this is certainly important stuff that is relevant to many kinds of AE automation. Good to have it here on the forum for others to digest and figure out. Don’t know if it’s a security thing or a bug.

I know that AppleScript can execute keyboard shortcuts in AE. I wonder if you could get a keyboard shortcut to run your script seemingly internally in AE by triggering a keyboard command.

Curious what master Dan thinks about this.

Mitch

[Mitch Mann]

I was researching this a while back, but abandoned it because I’m switching back to Windows soon.

I successfully did it the other way around: I got a jsx to run an applescript, cleverly having applescript trigger keyboard shortcuts in AE that are not available to scripting. But I never tried having an applescript run a jsx.

As far as your issue with an externally triggered jsx not being able to use file.open(), I have a thought. Here goes…

When you have multiple script UI scripts running in AE at the same time, one of the scripts can use the other script’s functions. So I wonder if you could launch a script UI in AE (launch it yourself manually from inside AE) that has a function which uses your file.open(). Then have the externally launched jsx use that script’s function to do the file.open() work. And if your applescript needs to open AE in the first place, perhaps you could have AE autoexecute the script UI with the function in it also.

Hope some of that makes some kind of sense! Don’t know if it would work, but its worth a try.

Cheers,
Mitch

PS: And in the “Mam, is your computer plugged into the wall?” category, we’re all assuming that you checked the preferences box for Also Scripts to Write Files. (-:

[Mitch Mann]

Put a wig on his face.

[Mitch Mann]

Here’s two ways to do it:

Make all your solids bright green, or some obvious color. On all of these green solids add a “Change to Color” effect. Make the “From” color the bright green.

Then on a null in your main comp, add the effect “Color Control”. Link the Change-to-Color’s “To” color to that Color Control in the main comp.

When you change the Color Control in the main comp, all of the solids will change to that color. Note that it is sometimes not an exact change to the specific RGB values, but it’s pretty close, and you can fiddle to get it right.

The other way to do it is to use big full-screen shapes instead of solids. You can directly link the shape’s “fill” to the color control (don’t have to mess with Change-to-Color”), so you can be completely accurate on the RBG values when they propagate to all of the shapes.

Cheers.

[Mitch Mann]

You could use some sliders. For each set of keyframes that you think you’d want to adjust, make a slider, then make an expression that adds the slider value to the keyframes’ value.

[Mitch Mann]

If anyone’s interested in this topic, I got this response from Xavier on the Adobe forum.

If you want color you now need images. You’ll face other issues.

https://forums.adobe.com/message/5447193#5447193

https://forums.adobe.com/message/5642864#5642864

Xavier

Quite a bummer.

[Mitch Mann]

If its the same folders that you’re creating every time, it would be easier to skip expressions and just make a blank projects with your folders in it that you can load or import.

[Mitch Mann]

You could use valueAtTime to offset some of the lights in time, giving the appearance of a little randomness.