[Tomas Bumbulevičius]

hey, does it need to be 1:1 ratio based on rotation value, or whether you want to interpret rotation to position into a different range of values?

By 1:1, I mean interpolation where rotation literally drives xPos.
By other range, I mean interpolation, where rotation is translated into different xPos range. Lets say 0..90 degrees rotation moves layer from 180px to 540px, for example.

If anything else – just let us know.

Find out more:
After Effects Tutorials: motion design, expressions, scripting.
Boxer – Dynamic Text Boxes Template with a Live Preview

[Tomas Bumbulevičius]

Ido, I don’t think there is such service in general – but you could always drop something here and chances are high readers will share their opinions accordingly.

Find out more:
After Effects Tutorials: motion design, expressions, scripting.
Boxer – Dynamic Text Boxes Template with a Live Preview

[Tomas Bumbulevičius]

Hey Andy, I just made a read of whole post twice… And still not actually sure what is an issue. Below are few guesses:

You want to control time-remap inside pre-comp from master comp, but it doesn’t work as expected, because times are different among the comps in your expression?

Also, it’s not clear what master properties you are referring to.

Please let us know if above describes the scenario, or is it somewhat different.

Find out more:
After Effects Tutorials: motion design, expressions, scripting.
Boxer – Dynamic Text Boxes Template with a Live Preview

[Tomas Bumbulevičius]

Hey Ido, simply said – there a no rules, but recommendations, which, however, is most often comes from personal preferences, and overall structural thinking. To break this apart:

1. Pre-compositing:
~ Pre-comp all the items/objects which ‘potentially’ might be re-used, or could require tweaking ‘after’ when they were created.
~ Pre-comp all the texts.

Whenever you are going to animate/transform and do any other actions with those pre-comps, you will save yourself from hassle of running into changes, afterwards. Comps are just containers, which can have objects or their references inside.

2. Organise your project into logical sections – whether these are scenes in explainer, or topic related portions. Separating them logically and adding objects into their unique comps will help you, especially with revisions in place.

3. ALWAYS keep organised project panel, NEVER leave it as a mess.
~ When pre-compositing, make proper item names.
~ When its done, make sure to put items into their respective folders by ‘meaning’.

Everything else will come with a practise 😉

Find out more:
After Effects Tutorials: motion design, expressions, scripting.
Boxer – Dynamic Text Boxes Template with a Live Preview

[Tomas Bumbulevičius]

Peter, nice to see a brave man not running away from CLI, haha! Few questions:

1. Will your ‘ranges’ of frames will vary from project to project, or will remain in the same junks?
2. Here you can see how to trigger command in aerender. The only thing to deal with is passing proper ‘frame numbers’ to render command. If it is going to be constant – thats easy. If might vary – then extendscript will be needed to read those numbers (from markers, or other reference elements, like pre-comp layers lenghts) and pass to render command accordingly.

Cheers!

Find out more:
After Effects Tutorials: motion design, expressions, scripting.
Boxer – Dynamic Text Boxes Template with a Live Preview

[Tomas Bumbulevičius]

Hey Peter,

if you are familiar with CLI commands, you could prepare a batch script which renders out regions with aerender automatically.

If CLI is out of question, then you will still need a script (Extendscript based) to do this semi-automatically.

Find out more:
After Effects Tutorials: motion design, expressions, scripting.
Boxer – Dynamic Text Boxes Template with a Live Preview

[Tomas Bumbulevičius]

Hey Hans,

this one is easy. You simply need to control positioning of the line by interpolation (if no keyframes shall be used).

Add ease ()expression to the X position (https://expressions.aenhancers.com/interpolation.html) and alter the ‘slide amount’ by using the longest text box width as a starting position.

Here is pseudo version, replace it with your actual values and apply to X pos.

ease(time, [animationStartTime], [animationEndTime], [finalPosition - longestLineWidth - gapDistance], [finalPosition])

Find out more:
After Effects Tutorials: motion design, expressions, scripting.
Boxer – Dynamic Text Boxes Template with a Live Preview

[Tomas Bumbulevičius]

Hey Martin,

to have this as a working template, you need to do the following:
1. Link layers to a null, which will affect all positioning.
2. Get each of the layers’s widths. Since they can be shapes, use sourceRectAtTime().
3. Add scale value into width estimation if it is altered from original size.
4. Calculate the center point of all layers widths including gaps in between in relation to comps size.

Side notes:
1. Make sure that client’s logo anchor is right aligned.
2. Plus symbol – center aligned.
3. Vendor asset – left aligned.

In such case, the gaps will always remain the same, just X shift will adjust. I have this in mind, but if you hit a wall just drop a note.

Find out more:
After Effects Tutorials: motion design, expressions, scripting.
Boxer – Dynamic Text Boxes Template with a Live Preview

[Tomas Bumbulevičius]

Eduardo – you can’t alter the value of keyframe itself by a slider.

Instead of using keyframes, you could use interpolation methods, which can be controlled by sliders then.

Find out more:
After Effects Tutorials: motion design, expressions, scripting.
Boxer – Dynamic Text Boxes Template with a Live Preview

[Tomas Bumbulevičius]

Hey, few points:

1. Is the text being animated IN by Text Animation engine by simple opacity fade or differently?
2. Do you want scaled version of a character to actually animate up real fast, or appear by on/off scenario, single frame long?

Find out more:
After Effects Tutorials: motion design, expressions, scripting.
Boxer – Dynamic Text Boxes Template with a Live Preview