[Noel Powell]

This is perfect! So elegant and simple. I have much to learn…
Thank you, Dan!

After Effects templates – lens flares, light leaks, old film effects, digital glitches, VHS glitches, and more: https://CreationEffects.com

[Noel Powell]

Thanks Todd, that’s what I was afraid of. Let me rephrase and if you can think of another way to do this then great. If not, thanks anyway.

I have a layer in motion powered by an expression, not keyframes. I need it to start its motion over and over again at intervals. So every X number of frames, it should repeat the motion. X value is based on a slider control input.

Here’s what I have so far:
cycleEnd is the time (in seconds) that the motion should start over

motion = (time * 30) * -thisComp.height; //Moves the layer one comp height every frame
if (time > cycleEnd)
{ yVal = ((time - cycleEnd) * 30) * -thisComp.height }
else { yVal = motion }
value + [value[0], yVal]


After Effects templates – lens flares, light leaks, old film effects, digital glitches, VHS glitches, and more: https://CreationEffects.com

[Noel Powell]

There is an After Effects template (not a plugin) which is very user-friendly and can create really high-quality lens flare effects using expressions. It’s called Creation Lens Flares from Creation Effects. Not free, but it’s a lot cheaper than the plugins. You can see a demo video on their site: CreationEffects.com

[Noel Powell]

Ok thanks, Dan. I’ll try to solve this another way.

[Noel Powell]

Of course, if that magic piece of code doesn’t exist, I’d like to hear how you would approach this problem.

[Noel Powell]

That’s what I needed. Thank you again, Dan.

[Noel Powell]

This is a life-saver. I don’t fully understand it, but I’m just thrilled that it works. I couldn’t use the first expression which used markers because it didn’t allow the number of particles to be changed with the slider. The second one works great with one little addition. If the slider value was changed it would create new keyframes at that location, making the number of particles change. I needed the number to be constant, so I made that control slider a dummy slider with just one keyframe at the beginning, and created a new slider to control the number of particles. The dummy slider, which your birth rate expression still points to, now has this expression on it:

expression (effect(“New Slider”)(“Slider”)

Seems to do the trick. Thanks for your help, Dan

[Noel Powell]

That is perfect. Thanks so much.

[Noel Powell]

Works perfectly! It even adds a sort of glitch sound to the audio which really adds to the effect.

Thank you!!

[Noel Powell]

What are the dimensions of your canvas? It could be 300dpi, but if the image is only 1 inch by 1 inch, or 50 pixels by 70 pixels, for example, you’re still working with a very small document and any text you add will look huge.