[Samuel Rustenburg]

Hey Gabe

To be honest I can’t remember the situation to well and how I fixed it. I think what I did was I just made those elements not working into its own comp and had my 3D animation happen in the comp instead of the main one.

The other thing as well is that some of the layers in the material options of the layer, there are some options to “ACCEPT LIGHTS”.

Lastly – the lights might be to far away from your object and its not absorbing light, maybe there’s a layer obstructing the light. Turn on 4 camera view under the window and take a look around to see if that reveals anything.

Unfortunately im not an expert yet. But I did manage to finish that project.
https://vimeo.com/237801347

[Samuel Rustenburg]

Fantastic!

I do have one final question. The expression is between two key frames, is there a chance that theres a line that can be added that allows any amount of key frames. I’d like the cursor to slow down for a part of the voice over/on screen text. Like at the break even point, the lines slow down or stop growing, then after the information is communicated I want to ramp the animation back up until we get to point 2 on the graph, again slowing down or stopping the line growth to give time to digest the data at this point in time.

I’ll be able to achieve this through splitting layers Id assume, one last curve ball for you if your looking for another home run ;p

[Samuel Rustenburg]

James you are amazing!!!

I had a little hiccup of trying to remove the decimal points when updating the week counter. I couldn’t use the previous expression with this one easily (numbers weren’t matching up to excel data). But I think I got that figured out by changing to rA[rA.length-1].toFixed(0). The one thing I cant figure out that isn’t a big deal is that after the last keyframe the decimal points show back up (I just plan on splitting the layer and removing the expression).

I think I can manage the rest from this point on, but I am curious if this expression would allow for multiple keyframes of the “cursor”. For example if we have a voice over that talks about the “breakeven point” we’d want the cursor to pause until its time to move onto the other cost specs. I can achieve this through splitting layers, but im sure there’s a simpler/cleaner way of doing this.

Anyways, thanks for all your help here. Trying to understand this has allowed me to learn a couple new things and i’m going to try to understand this world more so I can write my own expressions at some point instead of bugging you guys! I’d love to buy you a cup of coffee or lunch for taking the time to help me out here. Shoot me a paypal or donation link if you got one, unless your local to Toronto, Canada area lets me up! ;p
– Sam

[Samuel Rustenburg]

Sorry I should have plugged it in before responding.

I had an error come about on line 7 but I renamed my cursor layer to what was contained in the expression and the error has disappeared. I then had an issue of the week number staying a 3 but realized I have a the “curser” layer parented to a null to control the position of the cursor.

How would I modify the expression to target the X slider position of a null that the cursors X position is parented too (I separated the dimensions of the position) . I’m thinking the easiest would be to probably remove the null controller and just go straight from the layer like this expression is targeting.

I’m hoping that I can just modify your script here to also apply to the “DIFFERENCE/SAVINGS” value. Any suggestions on how to also achieve something like this script?

Thanks for the help! This is little code has saved me hours!!!!

[Samuel Rustenburg]

Thanks for this James! This should be helpful.

This should work without any graph data correct. Will I need to include some sort of JSON or EXCEL data information to tell what the weekStart,weekEnd are to reference or is this experssion generating data based on the posStart and posEnd. (Sorry I’m a basic user of expressions).

[Samuel Rustenburg]

I currently have the graph data stored in a google excel, and I haven’t decided on how the graphs are generated. I haven’t used JSON files but it seems like it might be the way to go. I’ve done a conversion and got a JSON file from my EXCEL document (Im leaning on the side that it didn’t translate properly).

I think I was just going to build out the graph with shape layers and just trick the animation. The thought that came to mind was to use sliders parented to positions of the shape layer/cursor, then the “Difference in savings” data I want generated is parented to those sliders.

I’ve done number counters over time, just never to the position of an object. Out of the gate I didn’t think it was possible.

[Samuel Rustenburg]

Thanks Mark

I ended up gutting it last night (WHAT A PAIN) but it seems that I had multiple issues going on. I had one light with only intensity keyframes but it was turning off and on – ended up duplicating another camera moved it into the buggy camera and it resolved that issue. Afterwards I still had 1 light colour change in my object file – it looked like my object was going “Negative” colour mode. But nothing was on it, turns out it was my element layer. So I duplicated a previous element layer and replaced and it resolved my issue.

Looks like Im good to go, but still not sure “Why it happened” or how to resolve outside of deleting those layers. From your last comment, im curious to know more what you mean by “Have you checked your geometry for surface normal settings?” With my last troubleshooting of element im wondering if it was a texture/object setting that may have been turned on for that layer in the element 3d settings that im unware of (just getting my hands dirty with element 3d finally).

Thanks again for the help Mark
– Sam

[Samuel Rustenburg]

Thanks for responding mark. I looked for keyframes but I don’t have any on the light that is giving me issues. I just wanted to mention it jumps around because 1) I’m turning the layer off and on 2) I move my cursor before the light is activated to another light in a slightly different position, but when I hide the layer or adjust its in point its effecting layers it shouldn’t be.

My understanding of layers is that if your cursor isn’t on the layer it shouldnt appear. Maybe this rule doesn’t apply to lights and no matter where the in and out points are it will effect all layers…..I cant say that’s the case when other lights turn off and on when I cut in and out points.

I have another video that shows the issue of how my light is behaving that I don’t understand why. I don’t consider myself and expert but I have been using AE for about 10+years and consider myself Intermediate and feel like I should know what’s going on here but its going over mine and co-workers heads.

https://vimeo.com/237121682/4b34958ab7

Thanks for the help!