[Paul Roper]

Dan – some of the sampleimage results were wrong because I had the text layer parented to a null and shifted out of position, so the pixel it was actually over was not the pixel it “thought” it was over. That was an easy fix…

but…

Now I need to do the same thing, but with a grid of 40 x 45 numbers. That’s 1800 numbers = 1800 layers. I tried making a comp of a row of 40 numbers, with each number sampling the picture in the parent comp. This worked perfectly for the first row, so I duplicated it, but obviously it’s only one comp, so the expressions only get calculated once, producing a nice row of numbers, which is then duplicated.

So…any further thoughts, anyone?

[Paul Roper]

Could you export the text as a PDF from InDesign, then either import it directly into After Effects or open it in Photoshop to manipulate it (maybe put each block of text on a different layer) then import this into AE? That way, you’d hopefully eliminate the risk of characters/accents being substituted during the process, which might happen if you copy and paste.

This is assuming you don’t need to animate the text per-character.

It reminds me of a job I worked on many years ago where the Arabic artwork was supplied as A3 prints, with no indication which way was “up”! We just went with what looked about right, and got lucky!

– Paul

[Paul Roper]

Thank you very much for that simple fix, Dan – it works perfectly!

I eventually used a workaround – the good old Numbers effect, with its decimal places and leading zeroes options. But I will certainly be using that .value in future.

– Paul

[Paul Roper]

Yes, if the client adds new layers, it’s a bit of a nightmare.

If when you bring in your Photoshop document, if you choose ‘document size’ for the layers (not ‘layer size’) then if the clients add/remove elements from a layer, or change the size of something on that layer, it shouldn’t screw up your positioning (quite as much!).

[Paul Roper]

Dave, do you ever tire of giving that same reply on a weekly basis whenever this same question is asked?!

…Not that I disagree – it’s excellent advice! I’m still awaiting my 32GB RAM upgrade; then all my processors can zoom along at their full potential. Let’s just hope that in CS6 Adobe make sure that ALL the effects (including the most processor-intensive: PARTICLES) are 64 bit multi-threaded!

– Paul

[Paul Roper]

Assuming the layer order or number of layers hasn’t changed, just select all the layers in the project panel, right-click and choose ‘reload footage’. Failing that, closing and re-opening the project will do it.

– Paul

[Paul Roper]

Thanks Walter and Kevin – I will give those a try. I have previously tried tweaking the render control file without any luck (but that was a long time ago) in an attempt to fix that pesky ‘render control file not found’ error (not sure if that’s exactly it…it’s something like that!).

– Paul

[Paul Roper]

I heard of this today:

https://appzapper.com/

…I don’t know if you’re running Mac OSX or not, but it might help if you are. I’ve never used it, but my IT guy recommends it.

Paul

[Paul Roper]

You can achieve this using the sampleimage expression. I’m no expressions expert but there are a few on this site. Just do a search for sampleimage and you’ll hopefully find something useful.

It basically returns the RGB values of any point you specify. You can then link whatever value you like (position, rotation, amount of blur, brightness of lens flare – whatever) to this value.

Hope that helps (a bit!)

– Paul

[Paul Roper]

Thanks Dan, but I went for the manual, tedious method in the end, but put an expression on the position of each text layer to automatically position it correctly. Strangely, some of the ‘sampleimage’ results were completely wrong, for no apparent reason – for example some points were very dark grey, but the sampleimage gave me a result of around 1. Odd.

Look at all those lovely, boring layers:

…and here’s the position expression to space the 100 text layers automatically (in a 10×10 grid layout):

[thisComp.layer(index-10).transform.position[0],thisComp.layer(index-10).transform.position[1]+90]