[Tomas Bumbulevičius]

Hey Hans, could you please confirm the following: backgrounds are different ‘videos/animated loops’. When you control the movement of these landscapes, you find it complicated to match the tempo of background loops with train. It looks unnatural movement, with a train sliding over instead of fluidly moving in X?

Find out more:
After Effects Tutorials: motion design, expressions, scripting.

[Tomas Bumbulevičius]

If I understood you correctly, try to do this:

1. Duplicate your comp.
2. Import ‘new’ .ai files into the project.
3. Open duplicated comp.
4. Select new .ai file in the project panel, and layer to be replaced with new file inside opened composition.
5. Do ‘CMD + OPTION + /’ on Mac or ‘CTRL + ALT + /’ on WIN.

That way, you will maintain the same layers structure in the duplicated comp as it was in origin, but will replace layers with new .ai files.

Let me know if this helps or either if you need a different option!

Find out more:
After Effects Tutorials: motion design, expressions, scripting.

[Tomas Bumbulevičius]

Hey Ad, check this thread covered, might be helpful for your case to catch the difference: https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/227/40694

Find out more:
After Effects Tutorials: motion design, expressions, scripting.

[Tomas Bumbulevičius]

Completely agree. The easiest way of doing this – just link all the expansions to a slider and extend them all in one go.

To complicate this a bit more, expansion could be paired with rotation, in order to delay based on every shapes rotation/transform.

Find out more:
After Effects Tutorials: motion design, expressions, scripting.

[Tomas Bumbulevičius]

I can guarantee that in the example you shared motion blur is not applied. This would help to remove the choppyness ☺ Just make sure you do apply both motion blur toggles – on the layer/comp itself and above the layers at comp setting handles (on the left of Graph editor).

If this does not provide the smoothness, then we might be talking different things! 🙂

Find out more:
After Effects Tutorials: motion design, expressions, scripting.

[Tomas Bumbulevičius]

Thanks for clarifying! The choppy movement as you get could be introduced by the interpolation method, where object ‘jump start’ not exactly how you might want for specific case. This is where graph editor could possibly help.

As for the framerates I mentioned – maybe thats straightforward enough, but lets say you animate box from A to B.
In 30FPS, keyframe A is at 0F, keyframe B at 20F.

Now if you do the same 20F distance between the keyframes in 60FPS, animation will be significantlyfaster.

Again, this might be crystal clear for some:)

Find out more:
After Effects Tutorials: motion design, expressions, scripting.

[Tomas Bumbulevičius]

Try to do the following for the text-boxes anchor points (assuming they are both separate layers).

Left one:
sourceSize = thisLayer.sourceRectAtTime(time, false);
T = sourceSize.top;
L = sourceSize.left;
W = sourceSize.width;
H = sourceSize.height;
([L+ 0,T+H/2])

Right one:
sourceSize = thisLayer.sourceRectAtTime(time, false);
T = sourceSize.top;
L = sourceSize.left;
W = sourceSize.width;
H = sourceSize.height;
([L+ W,T+H/2])

You could use your used expressions with the same wording – just pasted here what I use. Most likely you will need to adjust position as well, but this will give you an idea how to make an object sticky!

Find out more:
After Effects Tutorials: motion design, expressions, scripting.

[Tomas Bumbulevičius]

Francesco – since you animate position value and add eases – do you know how to use graph editor to enhance animation further?

Also, since you are working in 60 FPS – make sure to increase distance of frames between the keyframes accordingly. What works for 30fps beautifully – does not look that way for higher frame rates. Just an observation for the topic! 🙂

Find out more:
After Effects Tutorials: motion design, expressions, scripting.

[Tomas Bumbulevičius]

Hey Jano,

do you want to keep the texts in the same place, while maintaining paddings, but to change width of the gap?

A) You could add matte where it should be, subtract it from the whole comp and then grow from the center of its position.
B) You could set anchor point expression of left object box to be on the left, and for the right one – on the right. Then each boxes width will grow from left/right and you could change each of them individually.

Find out more:
After Effects Tutorials: motion design, expressions, scripting.

[Tomas Bumbulevičius]

Hey Mark,

from what you defined, such behaviour should be possible only in those cases:
1. If you are replacing actual .ai file/part (which is in the projects panel). In such act, you are replacing the single item, which is referenced in all duplicated comps. Meaning, all comps are pointing to that X item, and its replacement would cause change in all layers.
2. If, after duplication, you open new comp, and it has some other pre-comps with those .ai layers inside. That way, main comp duplication few times in the project panel duplicates only.
3. Both points above covers,assuming duplication of items are done inside the project panel. If you are doing this inside the comp, then you are simply creating the references of original. Opening any of those ‘copies’ is reference to the same original. Unique duplication is done only in project panel.

Find out more:
After Effects Tutorials: motion design, expressions, scripting.