[Robert Müller]

Hi Arne,
As far as I know you can only create paths on a path object, like in a shape layer or on a mask. And since the expression can only effect the property it’s applied to, the path stays the same

[Robert Müller]

Hey Alex, I just replied to your other topic over at the expression forum, but Im not ure if this does what you are looking for. The best solution in this case would be adding a slider to your null as a “factor” and as it reaches 0 all layers move to the center. Like this:
fact = thisComp.layer("Control").effect("factor slider")(1)/100;
value*fact

Because the standard sliders go from 0 to 100 and I just want the multiplier I divide by 100 in the first step

[Robert Müller]

Hi Alex,
this should do what you are looking for. It feels like there should be a more elegant way but I cant think of one atm:
sFact=thisComp.layer("layer_1").transform.scale[0]/100;
if(sFact == 0){
sFact = 0.0000001
}
s=transform.scale[0]/sFact;
[s,s]

It basicaly gets the scaling factor from the first layer and divides its scale by the factor, hence negating it. So if your layer scales up to eg 200 (scale factor 2) the other value gets devided by this, so it goes down to 50.
Note that the layer with the expression could never truly reach 0, only get very small. I added the if loop for the case your first layer reaches zero and the expression wont break for dividing by zero, so I inserted a very small number.

[Robert Müller]

Since you seem to have a blue background I guess the bleeding stems from there. Check for any not full black/white areas in your matte, since any grey area, that might look white or black to the naked eye, will make the luma matte semi transparent

[Robert Müller]

Since they are distanced from the null they can’t be at 0,0, unless you messed with their anchor points. You should check again or maybe post a screenshot

[Robert Müller]

Hm, this sounds about right to me. Can you post a screenshot of your setup, like how you have linked the different layers?

[Robert Müller]

Hey Marcel, this should do what you are looking for:

fac=thisComp.layer("ctrl").effect("factor")(1) //slider on a Null layer
x=value[0];
y=value[1];
rdmMin=-100; //Min random value
rdmMax=100; //Max random value
rdmSeed=123456 //random seed
seedRandom(rdmSeed, timeless = true); //timeless is true, so the value doesnt update every frame
rdmVal=random(rdmMin, rdmMax);
z=rdmVal*fac;
[x,y,z]
Now when you animate your slider on the control layer from 0 to 1 the layers will start moving up to their random z position. You can increase this if you go beyond 1.
If this is not random enough you could always factor each layers index into the seed, so you would have a individual seed for every layer. If you want a more natural random distribution you could use “gaussRandom()” instead of “random()”

[Robert Müller]

Yes, you are right. sourceRectAtTime does not work with collapse transformations checked on precomps there are workarounds using the sampleImage function and looking for alpha values. But this is not very user friendly because it takes lots of time to calculate. So your best bet would be to crop your precomp to the actualy size, there are excellent scripts for this out there.

[Robert Müller]

Ok this should work for you:

sLayer = "";
for (i = index+1; i <= thisComp.numLayers; i++){
L = thisComp.layer(i);
if (! (L.hasVideo && L.active && L.opacity > 0)) continue;
sLayer = L.name;
sTime=timeToCurrentFormat(time-L.startTime);
break;
}

"YOUR STUDIO NAME - " +thisComp.name+"|"+timeToCurrentFormat() + "\n"+ sLayer+"|"+sTime;

[Robert Müller]

After effects is not the greatest in importing blending modes. Did you import it as footage or as a compsition (keeping the layer structure). Then you could change the blending mode of the symbols to screen or add.