[Todd Kopriva]

Oh, I thought that you were only having this problem when you were commenting out the entire expression.

When you create an expression and enable it, you are stating that the value of the property is whatever the expression evaluates to. If you comment out the whole expression, then the expression evaluates to… well… nothing (an undefined value).

If you only comment out a piece of the expression and don’t leave behind any code that evaluates to a value, then you’ll get a similar problem.

Yes, people comment out code all the time, but you also have to expect that if you comment out code and don’t leave behind anything that functions (or, in the case of an expression, evaluates to a value), then you’re going to get an error.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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[Todd Kopriva]

Yep. Dan is right.

Rather than commenting out the expression, you should disable it with the button for this purpose.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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[Todd Kopriva]

Dan’s theory is an excellent one. I’m going to verify it now.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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[Todd Kopriva]

“Roving keyframes are available only for spatial layer properties, such as Position, Anchor Point, and effect control points.”

So, setting mask shape keyframes to roving won’t accomplish anything.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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[Todd Kopriva]

“Supported import formats”

“Preparing and importing 3D image files”

“Using 3D object layers from Photoshop”

After Effects doesn’t directly import 3D models. It can import various 3D data and rendered images, though. Read the pages linked to above for details.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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[Todd Kopriva]

You have used an animation preset (specifically, a behavior animation preset), not an effect.

If you want to generate keyframes that represent motion originally created by an expression, you can use the Convert Expression To Keyframes keyframe assistant.

But I’d probably just stick with parenting the window to the house or precomposing them together and animating the precomposition layer.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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[Todd Kopriva]

> Well, the link Todd gave me on performance was a huge help and yes now I agree. The help desk and info. that I see now from Adobe is MUCH better, MUCH, MUCH better than in the past and most other companies. I love the addition of Adobe TV. With the sophisticated type of software that we all use today this is a welcomed customer service value added service…. But your right, now that I’ve been pointed in the right direction AE seems to have very good documentation.

Hooray! Now go and tell all of your friends who’ve been avoiding using After Effects Help and After Effects Community Help search because they didn’t see the point. 😉

> I wish Adobe TV was just a little bit more organized though, in being able to find the exact group of video’s you need.

I agree. That’s why I cataloged the After Effects videos in Adobe TV and Video Workshop here: “Video tutorials: getting started, new features, and common procedures”

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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[Todd Kopriva]

Are you using a trial version of the software?

from “Supported output formats”:
“The free trial version of Adobe After Effects software does not include some features that depend upon software licensed from parties other than Adobe. For example, mocha for After Effects, some effect plug-ins, and some codecs for encoding MPEG formats are available only with the full version of Adobe After Effects software.”

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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[Todd Kopriva]

I don’t know that any of the items in the “Improve performance” section of After Effects Help will address your specific issues, but it may be worth a look.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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[Todd Kopriva]

I see the scripts Change Email Settings.jsx and email_methods.jsx in this folder on my Windows system:

C:Program FilesAdobeAdobe After Effects CS4Support FilesScripts(support)

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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