[Moniek Van adrichem]

Woohoo! I figured it out, the problem was that you get a string from the Source Text, so you first need to convert that to an Array. Also I had to make a workaround on the fact that the square brackets in the middle get removed. I guess there’s a more elegant solution, but this works 😀

ctrl = thisComp.layer("colours");

colorstring=ctrl.text.sourceText;
colors=colorstring.split(",");
minDur = ctrl.effect("minDuration")("Slider")
maxDur = ctrl.effect("maxDuration")("Slider");
seedRandom(index,true)
segDur = random(minDur,maxDur);
easeTime = ctrl.effect("easeDuration")("Slider");

curSeg = Math.floor(time/segDur);
t = time%segDur;
seedRandom(curSeg,true);
idx1 = (Math.floor((random(colors.length))/4))*4;
seedRandom(curSeg-1,true);
idx0 = (Math.floor((random(colors.length))/4))*4;
color0 = colors.slice(idx0,(idx0+4));
color1 = colors.slice(idx1,(idx1+4));
ease(t,0,easeTime,color0,color1)

[Moniek Van adrichem]

When evaluating the expression in another Source Text I found that somehow the square brackets which define the color-arrays are removed when using

ctrl = thisComp.layer(“colours”);
colors=ctrl.text.sourceText.value;

So that might be the problem

[Moniek Van adrichem]

That’s what I thought as well, but somehow that gives this error (which refers to the line of idx1=Math.floor(random(colors.length))):

property or method named “length” in Class “Number” is missing or does not exist. It may have been renamed, moved, deleted, or the name may have been mistyped.

The weird thing is that I don’t get this error when putting the numbers directly in the expression.

ctrl = thisComp.layer("colours");

colors=eval(ctrl.text.sourceText.value);
minDur = ctrl.effect("minDuration")("Slider")
maxDur = ctrl.effect("maxDuration")("Slider");
seedRandom(index,true)
segDur = random(minDur,maxDur);
easeTime = ctrl.effect("easeDuration")("Slider");

curSeg = Math.floor(time/segDur);
t = time%segDur;
seedRandom(curSeg,true);
idx1 = Math.floor(random(colors.length));
seedRandom(curSeg-1,true);
idx0 = Math.floor(random(colors.length));
ease(t,0,easeTime,colors[idx0],colors[idx1])

[Moniek Van adrichem]

I thought the most convenient way would be to use an array of arrays like this:

[[141,203,235,255]/255,
[164,213,239,255]/255,
[205,219,143,255]/255]

But if its easier to use the 0-1 values that’s fine too 🙂

[Moniek Van adrichem]

Thanks so much, that works! So now I wanted to put the color values in the source text of a textlayer, so I could later decide to add or delete a color. Problem is that I cannot get my head around how to do this…

—
http://www.megamoniek.nl

[Moniek Van adrichem]

Hi Dan,

I was wondering if it would be possible to make it so that the squares all randomly get a color and duration assigned (which is different for each square). But that you can set the colors and range for the duration in a Control null, so that you can easily adjust that.

Thanks a lot!

Moniek

—
http://www.megamoniek.nl

[Moniek Van adrichem]

That’s exactly what I was looking for, thanks so much!