[Ole Sturm]

Thank you so much Dan. I know many of the questions that come up here must seem trivial to you but to many of us out here your expressions-related help is invaluable – I personally have been at the taking end of your help since at least 2004. If you’ve got a “buy me a beer” button stashed away anywhere, please let me know. Failing that, let me know when you’re in Berlin and I’ll make sure your beer and bratwurst needs are covered.

[Ole Sturm]

Hi Dan,

That’s done the trick. Thank you so much for the help – you’re like the gift that keeps on giving. I clearly recall the first time I relied on your help all the way back in 2004!!!

Thanks again,

Ole

[Ole Sturm]

Wow, that was quick. How do I go about combining that with the expression that generates the number ie

scf = thisComp.layer("CONTROL").effect("scale")("Slider")/10000;
ptPos = thisComp.layer("Marker").transform.position[0];
date = (thisComp.width-ptPos)*1/scf;
date

[Ole Sturm]

Hey Dan,

This is sounding rocket-sciency. Here’s what I think you’re after:
10,000,000.N – 600,000,000.N (where N denotes the endless decimals that AE is chucking out) needs to be truncated to whole millions without any decimals eg 10 or 600.
1,000,000.N to 9,999,999.N needs to be truncated to whole millions with 2 decimals. eg 1.00 or 9.99
1,000.N – 999,999.N needs to be truncated to whole thousands without decimals eg 1 or 999.
I think where the millions are concerned there is no rounding required since the timeframe is so large but with the thousands it probably would require rounding to the nearest thousand in which case 999,999 would be 1 (million)

I’m not sure whether that’s what you mean but if it helps, here’s a rough of where the timeline’s at which will probably help to put things into perspective:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/zaztp5lzhdyt5ht/SC06-09-02_May21.mp4?dl=0 You’ll notice that the readout is often way out of whack (especially around the 1million mark) which is due to us currently keyframing it.

Cheerio

Ole

[Ole Sturm]

Hi Dan,

Long time. Fancy meeting you here ????

Here’s what I’ve got a in a little more detail:

I got the below expression off a very helpful AE Lister. The readout is for an expression-driven timeline which spans 600 million years and the below expression gives me the readout for the year where the marker/pointer is currently sitting. The problem I’m having with figuring this out is as follows:
1- when the readout for the year is 1,240,000.00 I need to truncate it to 1.24.
2- when the readout is 6,000,000 I need to truncate it to 6
3- when the readout is 400,000 I need to truncate it to 400
4- when the readout is 4,000 I need to truncate it to 4

This is because the label next to the readout will say “million years ago” and “thousand years ago”

Then, I also need to look at controlling the decimal points. In the fist instance above we do want a decimal point but not in the other 3 cases. Currently I have this snippet “FixValue = effect(“Decimal”)(“Slider”).value;” which is linked to a slider where I keyframe the number of decimals manually.

I’ve been chasing my tail with this variations of this for a week now and don’t even know if it’s possible to resolve using just one expression. In any case, I reckon if you don’t know then nobody does.

Thanks Dan,

Ole

scf = thisComp.layer("CONTROL").effect("scale")("Slider")/10000;
ptPos = thisComp.layer("Marker").transform.position[0];
date = (thisComp.width-ptPos)*1/scf;
date

[Ole Sturm]

Oh dear, feeling a bit thick here. Completely didn’t think about that option. Thanks guys.

[Ole Sturm]

How would I go about setting this up so that there is a delay ie. the co-ordinates returned are from n second earlier?

Thanks in advance.

[Ole Sturm]

Rephrased my question on Google and found this over on aescripts:

If you are a freelancer sometimes you don’t have access to the ScriptUI Panels folder. Here is a tip on how to run scripts outside of that folder.

Save the script anywhere you have access like the Desktop or Documents folder
If the script extention is .jsxbin, then rename it to be .jsx
In After Effects choose File -> Scripts -> Run Script File
And choose the script file from the Desktop of where ever you saved it
You won’t be able to dock the script but it should be able to run normally otherwise

[Ole Sturm]

No problem at all. Just glad you’re able to help out with this. I have to admit, this is now waaaay beyond me and I have absolutely no idea how this is doing it’s magic. Something’s not quite right though – on frame 1 we see the formed sentence, then at frame 2 scrambled text and at frame 3 the “decode” process starts. However, what I’m hoping it would do is showing randomly scrambled letters animating up until the “tStart” at which point the decode process begins and runs until “tSop”. Not sure if that makes sense.

Anyhow, thanks again for helping out.

[Ole Sturm]

Hi Kevin, that’s certainly the effect I want to achieve but it won’t work as the decode effect does not limit the characters being used – I need to limit mine to G, T, C and A.