[Steven Tiell]

Great. Thanks for all your help. Here’s the finished product.

[Steven Tiell]

This is awesome and it’s working! I’ve got it about half finished now. just one question before I do the next half…If I want to adjust the overall time that it takes, I have to make that modification in the code of every single group element, right? So say I want it to last 2 seconds, I’d do

timeStart = 0;
timeStop = 2;

Is there a way to over-ride the group values from the slider expression so I only have to make that adjustment in one place?

[Steven Tiell]

Okay. Great. I figured out how to add the slider…and the code…and I’m still getting an error. Let me back up. Here’s my word cloud:

I imported the file from Illustrator and did “Create Shapes from Vector Layer” and got 94 “Groups” under “Content” within my timeline item.
I added the slider & your first snippet of code to the slider:

And then I added your 2nd snippet of code to “Group 94”:

And then I get this error:

I’m confused. Clearly, the effect named “Slider Control” exists. I even tried to put the “Slider Control” effect on the null layer, but got the same error.

My end goal is to get each of the words in the word cloud to randomly appear (fade in). Then I want to export an animated GIF for a PPT deck (sadly enough).

effect("Slider Control")(1)
theArray = [];
seedRandom(index,true);
n = thisComp.numLayers;
for (i = 0; i < n; i++) theArray[i] = i+1;
for (i = 0; i < n; i++){
idx = i + Math.floor(random(theArray.length - i));
temp = theArray[i];
theArray[i] = theArray[idx];
theArray[idx] = temp;
}
i = Math.floor(time);
if (i >= 0 && i < n) theArray[i] else 0

content("Group 94").transform.opacity
timeStart = 2;
timeEnd = 5;
s =thisComp.layer(1).effect("Slider Control")("Slider");
mySeg = s.valueAtTime(index-.5)-1;
dur = timeEnd - timeStart;
n = thisComp.numLayers;
segDur = dur/n;
myStart = timeStart + mySeg*segDur;
myEnd = myStart + segDur;
linear(time,myStart,myEnd,0,100)


[Steven Tiell]

This is EXACTLY what I want to do, except I’m doing it with a word cloud of ~100 words. I am a total novice to AE, but happen to have CS6 on my computer and would love to figure this out. I can’t seem to figure out how to (1) add a slider, or (2) add an opacity expression.

I found this tutorial – https://provideocoalition.com/ryoung/story/using_and_creating_after_effects_scripts/ – about using scripts in AE CS6 and followed its instructions, but nowhere do I see the slider reference. Furthermore, these scripts don’t seem to have the “fuction ()” format of other JavaScript functions, so I’m even further confused. Can you add any further insight? Thanks!