I’m not sure what you mean by “unable to export” but I’m having an issue with one particular project in PPro (version 25.4; beta or release; I also tried 25.3 – same bug): I cannot export anything at all from within the project – however I try to export a sequence, nothing happens (I can right-click it in the Project panel, do Export Media…, or…

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(Only nearly 16 years later)…

The Layer Style > Stroke, in my experience, is nearly always aliased and ugly. I found my way here doing a quick search for answers – to no avail. It has nothing to do with pixel aspect ratio.

Hello – and yes – it has been a long while!

The client has supplied me with a font that is actually 3 fonts – a ‘main’ font, a ‘bits on the left of each character’ font and a ‘bits on the right of each character’ which can be different colours. So basically I need three identical layers of text…well, identical except the font.

Since I first asked…

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Even if I manually change the text type to Paragraph in the second layer (or even if it’s already Paragraph text) if I change the bounding box of the ‘master’ layer, the expression-linked layer’s text does not update to reflect this. There is seemingly no way to link the dimensions of the paragraph-bounding-box from one text layer to another -…

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Hello,

I’m trying to copy the sourceText from layer 1 to layer 2, but layer 1’s text is Paragraph Text, and layer 2 does not copy the shape/position of layer 1’s paragraph. Is there any way to do this, perhaps using any of the .style properties?

Thanks in advance for any help!

On the (almost) tenth anniversary of this answer – THANK YOU! I was about to do a feature request for just this thing, but thought “Hmmm….better check whether it already exists”. And here you are, with the answer!

Hello,

I’m creating a very quick 3D thing in Illustrator, but I cannot find a way to MOVE the thing in 3D space…if this is even possible? I just want to move a thing closer to the “camera” in the z-axis. Any ideas, anyone, please?

Nobody? Once again, I’m trying to do this, and stumbled across my own question from over 2 years ago!

Perfect, thanks!

In fact I was just reading (on the actual Adobe help page!) about appending the numbers to the end of the function to specify the location but you saved me the head-scratching!
As ever, thanks Dan!

Hello,

I have a block of text (3 lines) and I want to be able to set the font etc. of the middle line. I can split it into three lines easily like this:

blurb = text.sourceText;

var firstLine = blurb.split("r")[0];

var secondLine = blurb.split("r")[1];

var thirdLine = blurb.split("r")[2];

firstLine + "r" + secondLine + "r" + thirdLine

…but if I…

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I think I was doing a SourceRectAtTime(t).height thing, and when I typed the “he” of “health”, the usual suggestion pop-up menu appeared, and one of them was “health”! But, weirdly, I also cannot repro it on the latest release version nor beta version of AE! I do do a daily update of my CC apps…not sure if it was something that went away in an…

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I assumed the pop-up suggestions were solely the available JavaScript terms, not some AI-generated list of words?

Hello,

When typing in “.height” today, I noticed in the pop-up that one of the suggested options was “health”. Anyone know what this is? Searching Adobe and other expressions refs found nothing!

It’s funny how:
(a) over 9 years the Adobe CC price has shot up
and
(b) some issues still have not been resolved (hmmm…”Resolve”…that gives me an idea…)

I just had this exact same issue today, in July 2024: I have a ~7 minute edit with ~30 linked AE comps. I changed one of the comps in AE, and in PPro it looks perfect – all updated and nice. I…

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Hello,

I have a Mocha Pro track set up that works ok – it’s a guy moving around, and I need to add a logo to his T-shirt. At the end of the shot, the camera does a rapid zoom in, and Mocha fails to track those last 9 or so frames. So I’ve manually added keyframes for the X-spline, but the mesh does not follow it. Any idea why?

I know I can sel…

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Hello,

As you can see from this spectral pitch display, I have some audio with a background tone that rises in pitch from about 4KHz to about 6kHz over around 7 seconds. This rising tone appears in the background around 15 times in my Premiere Pro sequence. Is there way I can create some kind of keyframe-controlled, or LFO-controlled notch filter…

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OMG I’ve found a solution! From trawling around for an answer, I stumbled across this: https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro-discussions/replace-multiple-clips-in-timeline-using-shift-alt-windows/m-p/12231950#M360840

…someone suggested using alt-shift drag, instead of just alt-dragging the clip onto the sequence, and IT WORKS!!! Shout this…

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I’ve been trying to do exactly the same thing (but in the year 2024) – and PPro is being very annoying. Here’s my situation:

I’ve made a 16:9 sequence, with quite a few cuts, from mainly 16:9 supplied footage.

I now need to make 1:1 and 9:16 versions; the client has supplied me with 1:1 and 9:16 footage – the same duration, codec etc. as the 16:9…

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I think I already know the answer to this is “no”, but here goes…

I have a Text layer that scrolls (intermittently) up the screen, i.e. it shunts up one line, then sits there for ~1sec, then shunts up again, sits for ~1sec and so on. I’ve animated the text moving up using a simple Text Animator with 3 keyframes and a loopOut(type = "offset",…

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Oh yes! Checking the scripting system was also one of my first thoughts, and I thought I’d checked that – I looked in the prefs and couldn’t even find the option to change it (I’m sure it used to be in there, didn’t it?) and because the option wasn’t even in there, I assumed that Adobe must’ve dropped the old ExtendScript system completely, and…

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I must admit, I’ve never actually used any of the text style expressions, but today I’d like to. So I looked at the Adobe help, and it suggested this expression would return the font name of another layer:

var otherLayer = thisComp.layer("Some Text"); 
otherLayer.text.sourceText.style.font; 

I’ve set this up in a comp, with just 2 layers; on “Layer…

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6 years on, and we still don’t have anything like Premiere’s lovely project panel in AE. Feel free to upvote my suggestion here: https://community.adobe.com/t5/after-effects-ideas/better-project-file-bin-management-like-in-premiere/idi-p/14036445#M2387

Hello Emil,

A few things spring to mind when looking at that animation:

The background dots – these could be made like this:
Create a shape layer

Add a path going from one side of the screen to the other

Add a dashed line

Add a gap to the dashed line

Adjust the dashes/gaps, and keyframe those values

Add a repeater to repeat in the y-axis all down the…

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Is it possible to solo an object in C4D Lite? I cannot find the solo button anywhere! Note: I’m using Lite, not the full C4D (I know how to solo things in the full version – or at least I used to a few years ago when I last used the full version!)

I’m only on C4D Lite at the moment, and I don’t think that comes with the Connect thing 😕.

Maybe I just imagined the existence of a “previous/next” point selection shortcut. But yeah – using the Structure Manager could be useful. More useful than the Keyboard Shortcuts list in the Maxon Help being an image (instead of text), therefore completely unsearchable!

C4D’s inconsistency in how up/down arrow keys do stuff is a bit annoying*. If…

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I’m sure there’s a way to hop along a spline to select the next point, but I’ve searched high and low and cannot find it! anyone know of this?

Hello,

Quick question – can I sweep one thing (a simple circle) along multiple rails? I’ve tried parenting the rails under a null within the Sweep, but nothing happens at all – no sweep whatsoever. Any ideas, please? (I currently only have C4D Lite, so no MoGraph SplineMask object).

Thanks!

A nice simple expression! I find it fascinating to see old problems and solutions pop up, years later!

Ahh yes – I think I was working on an audio course for lynda.com for this and wanted a piano keyboard’s keys to flash when “pressed”.

Nobody? I’m still waiting patiently here…
🤣

With reference to all that complicated nonsense for adding commas in numbers, I always simply do this:

Number(x).toLocaleString()

…where x is your number. Couldn’t be simpler! For example, bung this in the Source Text of a text layer with a Slider control:

x = effect("Slider Control")("Slider").value.toFixed(0);
"$" + Number(x).toLocaleString()

Hello,

I’m trying to animate some Superluminal Stardust particles being fired at a flat surface and sticking to it. I can easily set up a physical simulation of the particles hitting the surface, then rolling/sliding off of it, but no matter how much I crank up the friction, the particles refuse to stick to the surface. Does anyone have any…

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Is that 👆 the oldest post on this site?! Over 20 years ago!

I realise this post was from some time ago, but I have a similar question, but simpler:
All I need to do, is get the index of a marker AT THE CURRENT TIME, not that fairly annoying/useless “nearestKey” thing, which changes whenever the current time is kinda near the marker, not ON the marker. I’m guessing the (somewhat convoluted) way of going…

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Oh yes – so there is!

Thanks for sharing your bottomless well of expressions knowledge to us mere mortals, Dan!

I’ve always been baffled by the expressions that Ray Dynamic Color puts into a colour swatch. Somehow, with exactly the same expression, it can make a different colour appear in a colour swatch.

For example, I have a simple palette set up with two colours – blue and yellow. If I click the blue swatch in the Ray Dynamic Color panel, the expression…

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Any thoughts, anyone? I’ve now finished that job, but I’m still curious how to do it, if anyone has any ideas they feel like sharing!😃

…and my next question, almost predictably, is:
How can I make points only appear within countries (i.e. not the sea) of my map? I know I could liberally scatter a load of nulls in my comp over the land masses, but I feel there should be a way to tell Plexus “Create points randomly where the alpha of this layer > 0”.

Hello. I’m trying to have a bunch of Plexus lines surrounding a sphere (that kind of ‘global communications’ kinda thing). I can create a sphere with points/lines, and add some noise to it to shift the points to random positions. But I want to move them randomly over the surface of the sphere – i.e. move in UV, while keeping their normals…

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As ever, Dan, you are an absolute hero of After Effects! The world of motion graphics people collectively bows down before your expressioneering greatness!

Continuing this conversation (from 6 years ago!), I’m looking for a similar way to start playing a layer when it reaches a marker. Here’s my situation:
I have a comp about 2 mins. long. At about 30 intervals (not regular) along the timeline, I want a short (finger click) sound to play. I could just put 30 layers of the sound in the comp and drag…

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“Sorry about that.” Yes, Dan. you should be sorry. That’s not what we pay you for!

I read somewhere recently that the world’s motion graphics community would completely collapse if Dan Ebberts ever stopped helping us all! And I absolutely agree!

We all love you and owe you MANY hours/days saved throughout our careers!

THANK YOU!
I was kinda on the right lines!
Strangely, the “parseInt(thisProperty.propertyGroup(3).name,10) – 1” didn’t work, but if I split it into a couple of lines:

var x = parseInt(thisProperty.propertyGroup(3).name,10);

x-1

…it DID work.

So, I’m back again, several years after my last post. I’m now looking to do something similar, but with text animators. All I want to do is get the name of the specific text animator. Like this:
I add an Animator. AE, by default, calls it “Animator 1”. I want this animator to affect line x of my text, so I rename it from “Animator 1” to, say “3”…

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