[Trent Armstrong]

Hi there!

I would like to offer up a solution that is a little different than your method. It seems that if you have a 3 minute comp and you want something that is 30 sec to loop through the length of the comp that you are duplicating, moving back in time one sec from the end of the first clip and then doing a dissolve to get the loop. Then you are duplicating again until you fill your comp. Is that correct?

You might try creating a comp that is length of your looping clip minus 1 sec, go to the end of the timeline and split your clip. There should be one sec of clip left over. Take that one second and snap it to the beginning of the timeline and do the opacity transition from 100 to 0.

You also might need to stretch the end of the bottom clip out a little past the end of the composition.

Then take this precomp into your final comp and turn on TimeRemap for the precomp. Next, set your time marker to the last keyframe and back up one frame.

Create a new keyframe here and delete the last keyframe. Then set an expression for TimeRemap and enter this: loopOut(“cycle”, 0) and stretch your layers out point to the end of the comp.

This will repeat your loop precomp until the comp is done! A very important point is to set the frame rate of your looping comp to 30 fps so there is no issue with the loop point

This technique works even better if you create your loop in a way that there are no dissolves.

Confession: I don’t know anything about Scripting yet so I have to resort to expressions. I hope this helps in the meantime!

Trent

Trent Armstrong – Creative Cow Leader
https://www.dallasaeug.com

[Trent Armstrong]

Hmmm. I’m not sure I get all of this but you might try applying TimeRemapping to your prerendered footage.

You’ll end up with some keyframes that you can compress or move around. For instance, if your animations (including the video) need to happen more quickly, you can grab all of the last keyframes and move them all toward the start of the timeline.

Also, if you select a range of keyframes and (holding the opt or alt key)grab the last keyframe of that range, you can scale the distance from the last keyframe to the first. This works with multiple layers too!

If I missed what you are looking to do, please let me know.

Trent

Trent Armstrong – Creative Cow Leader
https://www.dallasaeug.com

[Trent Armstrong]

That is very possible. You would need to set up expressions for each property you want to send to the parent comp, though.

The set up would be:

Parent Comp
Nested Comp

Inside Parent Comp use this expression for the camera’s position.
comp(“Nested Comp”).layer(“Camera 1”).position

It’s also possible to undock the timeline for your comps and then use the expressions pickwhip to take the info from the correct properties.

Good Luck!
Trent

Trent Armstrong – Creative Cow Leader
https://www.dallasaeug.com

[Trent Armstrong]

This page has expressions that are fairly simple to implement but they
are very cool.

https://mograph.net/board/index.php?showtopic=13954

What you’re looking for is Inertial Bounce.
Trent

Trent Armstrong – Creative Cow Leader
https://www.dallasaeug.com

[Trent Armstrong]

Cheers!

I think there are three ways to approach this. First, if it doesn’t destroy your project, you could make the two comps the same size.

Second, you could use sliders to take care of the offset. Add an X, a Y, and a Z expression slider to the “parent” layer in the final comp and pickwhip the expression in the position of your layer in the child comp.

Something like:
—————————–
xOffset = {pickwhip to X offset slider};
yOffset = {pickwhip to Y offset slider};
zOffset = {pickwhip to Z offset slider};

x = value[0] + xOffset;
y = value[1] + yOffset;
z = value[2] + zOffset;

[x, y, z]
—————————–
This would allow you to correct the position in the parent comp and hopefully would only be one-time tweaks instead of lots of animating.

THIRD, (Dan Ebberts would know better than me) but you might be able to use fromWorld(toWorld())

He has a good example at motionscript.com. I’m just changing “Comp” to “World” since “World is what you use when you are using a camera:
https://www.motionscript.com/design-guide/threeD-corner-pin.html

target = thisComp.layer({pickwhip this to your parent layer});
fromWorld(target.toWorld(target.anchorPoint));

A fourth option might be to make your child comp into a 3D and rasterized layer in the parent comp. (TRY THIS ONE FIRST!)

Good Luck!
Trent

Trent Armstrong – Creative Cow Leader
https://www.dallasaeug.com

[Trent Armstrong]

When you first click on the stopwatch to create an expression the base information for that property is the default information inside the expression. So clicking on the Anchor Point stopwatch puts “anchorPoint” in the expression field. That just references the information that is provided in the entry fields for x, y, and z (the numbers you would normally adjust to change the Anchor Points position.

If you accept this for the expression, then it just reads the x, y, and z coordinates and the property behaves as if it doesn’t have any expression applied at all.

Let’s say you have an expression for the Anchor Point of 100 layers. (“you have an expression for the Anchor Point of 100 layers!”)

If you want to get rid of the expressions for all the layers, first clear the expression for one layer and then opt+click or alt+click the stopwatch again to get the default expression.

Next, copy that expression only, select your other layers and paste the expression to all the layers. That effectively removes all of the calculations and returns each layers current coordinates.

I hope this helps!
Trent

Trent Armstrong – Creative Cow Leader
https://www.dallasaeug.com

[Trent Armstrong]

Hi!

I recommend that you use your Null only as an Expression Controller. Create 3 Slider Controls (X, Y, and Z) on your Null and name them appropriately.

Then use this expression in the Camera’s Position:

X = thisComp.Layer(“Null 1”).effect(“X”)(“Slider”);
Y = thisComp.Layer(“Null 1”).effect(“Y”)(“Slider”);
Z = thisComp.Layer(“Null 1”).effect(“Z”)(“Slider”);

(X, Y, Z)

After you put that expression in, you can keyframe the slider controls on the Null object and see them in the timeline by pressing “u” on the keyboard.

Let me know if that wasn’t what you were looking for!
Trent

Trent Armstrong – Creative Cow Leader
https://www.dallasaeug.com

[Trent Armstrong]

Hi!

My suggestion is to create a precomp that has multiple layers, each with Advanced Lightning applied where it is sparse and never touches the edges. And set the Mode to Add. Apply these settings first and then duplicate the layer.

Apply wiggle(4, 100) or something like that to the Origin and Direction

CHECK Decay Main Core and set Decay to about .21 with Forking aroung 40%.

For Opacity apply this expression (You’ll get on or off):

r = random(0,2);
Math.floor(r) * 100

Duplicate the layers, offset them on the Y axis. Then offset the Origin and Direction points by dragging them around the screen.

Put that comp into a new comp and apply CC Sphere. Turn Ambient up to 100% and apply the same expression as above to the Opacity of this layer.
is layer.

Trent Armstrong – Creative Cow Leader
https://www.dallasaeug.com

[Trent Armstrong]

That depends on the versions of AE and PS you are using. That kind of stuff might come over in AE 7. I KNOW it comes over in AE 8 (CS3). But if you are using 6.5, you will need to “Create Layers” out of your layer styles in PS before bringing them into AE 6.5.

That should help. If I didn’t get all the information to fully answer, just let me know what I missed.

Cheers,
Trent

Trent Armstrong – Creative Cow Leader
https://www.dallasaeug.com

[Trent Armstrong]

I found this too.

https://www.3dlapidary.com/HTML/Models.htm

Trent

Trent Armstrong – Creative Cow Leader
https://www.dallasaeug.com