[Nick Hill]

I can’t really as it’s under an NDA. But I’ve done a bit more poking about to try and trap what was slowing it down.

It turns out it *wasn’t* the two boolean objects, nor was it the Xpresso. It was one line of MoText wrapped to a circle spline.

With the MoText: 1m43 per frame
Swapping the MoText for a standard text object, lofted (but keeping everything else on – lighting, shadows, Xpresso, booleans, best AA): 8s per frame!

Is this a thing? Should MoText slow it down *that* much?

[Nick Hill]

Just got this with a file that was created in CC2014. The only difference was that I’d copied & pasted in a control null from another open instance of AE, which had initially pasted into my comp as a black solid called “Placeholder”. I’d been adding expressions using sourceRectAtTime() to control the size of a shape layer based on the text layer above it. Then suddenly, “Strange situation”. In my project window are two pieces of footage, the Solids folder and “Placeholder” italicised as if it can’t find it. None of the rest of the footage in the project is showing up, so it’s presumably this damn placeholder solid that’s causing the problem.

[Nick Hill]

Sir, as usual, I stand humbled by your comprehensive mathematical awesomeness. Thank you!

[Nick Hill]

Sorry, the first two lines of that code should’ve read….


L1 = thisComp.layer("line3");
L2 = thisComp.layer("line5");


[Nick Hill]

Thanks all. I wasn’t aware of the position subframe options (hidden in plain view??) but that’s actually pretty much exactly what I was thinking of.

Cheers

Nick

[Nick Hill]

Cheers Dan. I also found a workaround if it’s useful to anyone:

1) if the path isn’t in Illustrator, paste it in
2) in Illustrator, choose Object > Path > Simplify and set curve precision to 100%. This will add a load of extra points, spaced roughly equidistantly
3) copy the path, paste into a layer in AE. It will paste in as a mask
4) create a mask path keyframe, copy & paste this keyframe into the Path property on the shape layer.
5) you now have a path with equally-spaced points.

[Nick Hill]

Ah, adding extra curve points works great – thanks. Oddly enough, I also tried changing the brush (using the original path) and it looks fine, so maybe it’s the brush I was using that wasn’t rendering properly.

[Nick Hill]

FWIW – this error still occurs in CS5. I was copying a clip, which had been sped up to 750%, from Premiere into AE. Didn’t give me the error once I’d put the clip speed to 100% in Prem and tried copying and pasting again.

[Nick Hill]

I don’t think this kind of thing is ever possible in AE, simply because it’s stateless – every frame is evaluated independently of other frames, and it’s not possible to store the results anywhere (sliders are read-only for example). There may be a hack somewhere, but I’d be interested to know if there is!

[Nick Hill]

In that case, I doubt there is!

Cheers 🙂