[Noel Powell]

It does exactly as I described – I can’t thank you enough, Dan! There is one unexpected result, though. I failed to mention that I have Auto-Orient along Path turned on. The layer’s orientation is switching back to its default as soon as the layer stops moving. I’ve been trying to tweak it so that instead of completely stopping, it continues at a snail’s pace before it resumes its normal wiggle – just so the auto-orient angle is preserved. But I just don’t understand it well enough to make it work. Would you happen to have a solution?

Creation Effects – Creative tools for After Effects: https://CreationEffects.com

[Noel Powell]

I hadn’t used the sourceText function before, and I realize now that it gets the text written with the Text tool, not the text from the name of the layer, which is fine – the user will edit the text with Text tool. For anyone who needs it, here is what I did to get a value from a comp and layer that the user specifies…

After creating two text layers, one named “Target Comp Name”, and one named “Target Layer Name”, reference them like this…

targetComp = thisComp.layer(“Target Comp Name”).text.sourceText.value;
targetLayer = thisComp.layer(“Target Layer Name”).text.sourceText.value;
x = comp(targetComp).layer(targetLayer).transform.opacity

Creation Effects – Creative tools for After Effects: https://CreationEffects.com

[Noel Powell]

Those are both creative solutions to my problem. I’d like to preserve the user’s capability to name their comps whatever they want, but I think your idea, Andrei, will work nicely. They can easily rename the text layer to whatever the name of their comp is. Well done! Thanks!

Creation Effects – Creative tools for After Effects: https://CreationEffects.com

[Noel Powell]

Thanks, Dan. That does keep my random positions static so they’re not moving anymore. I needed to retrieve random valueAtTime positions of a Point Control that was moving. The positions needed to be along the path that the moving Point Control had already traveled, which is why I used random(time). Random(totalTime) chooses some random positions from the where the point is going to be, rather than just where it’s been. But I was able to add a little more math and it seems to be working well. Sorry, I should have explained better, but thank you! I couldn’t have got it working without you.

After Effects Templates – digital glitch effects, 80s VHS effects, old film effects, art effects, and more: https://CreationEffects.com

[Noel Powell]

Thank you for this expression, Dan. I wonder if you might help me take it a step further. I’ve been struggling to get it to work for my purposes because I’m using the result to seed a random point in time. The problem is since Time is a continually increasing value, my random point in time is continually changing – even though the seed is not changing (at least not until the HoldTime renews).
As you can see, I added a couple lines to the code. I have a Point Control that is moving/changing value. I need to retrieve random positions along the path that the Point Control has traveled, and I need those positions to remain still for the duration of the HoldTime. With this expression, I can get random positions along the path of the Point Control, but those positions won’t stay still – they keep traveling forward along the path. Any ideas? Thanks so much for your time.


maxHoldTime = 1;
minHoldTime = .5;
seedRandom(index,true);
totalTime = 0;
seed = 1;
while(totalTime <= time){
holdTime = random(minHoldTime,maxHoldTime);
totalTime += holdTime;
seed++;
}
seedRandom(seed,true);
t = random(time);
effect("targetPosition")("Point").valueAtTime(t);


After Effects Templates – digital glitch effects, 80s VHS effects, old film effects, art effects, and more: https://CreationEffects.com

[Noel Powell]

Works beautifully, Dan. Thank you so much!

After Effects Templates – digital glitch effects, 80s VHS effects, old film effects, art effects, and more: https://CreationEffects.com

[Noel Powell]

Thanks for the insights, Mark. As someone who spends hours every day in CS5 for the last 5 years, I agree that it has everything I need. I have the full subscription as well, so I also use the latest version a significant amount, and the features are certainly convenient (some of them I really love), but I can’t say I would recommend the upgrade to a light user. I certainly don’t find the new versions to be more reliable, I kind of hate the new Preview architecture, and for the life of me, I can’t understand why they would remove the multithreading capabilities.

After Effects Templates – digital glitch effects, 80s VHS effects, old film effects, art effects, and more: https://CreationEffects.com

[Noel Powell]

Brilliant – I expected a lot of math, and that is such a simple solution! And the results look really nice for what I’m doing. The objects are a little more dense in the core, and more sparse in the outer edges. Thanks so much, Liran!

Here’s the full expression that separates the x,y,z, if anyone’s interested:

xSpread = wiggle(0, thisComp.layer("CONTROL LAYER").effect("Spread Horizontal")("Slider"));
ySpread = wiggle(0, thisComp.layer("CONTROL LAYER").effect("Spread Vertical")("Slider"));
zSpread = wiggle(0, thisComp.layer("CONTROL LAYER").effect("Spread Depth")("Slider"));
[xSpread[0], ySpread[1], zSpread[2]]

After Effects Templates – digital glitch effects, 80s VHS effects, old film effects, art effects, and more: https://CreationEffects.com

[Noel Powell]

No, I wouldn’t expect you to download it if you already have Optical Flares. But not everyone has Optical Flares, and not everyone can afford Optical Flares.

After Effects Templates – digital glitch effects, 80s VHS effects, old film effects, art effects, and more: https://CreationEffects.com

[Noel Powell]

Interesting, I didn’t know abut Grow Bounds. It didn’t work for me in this case, but it definitely seems like it will come in handy in the future. Thanks for the response.

After Effects Templates – digital glitch effects, 80s VHS effects, old film effects, art effects, and more: https://CreationEffects.com