[Trent Armstrong]

I am pretty sure what’s causing the timeout is that you are using a shape layer. The bounds of a shape layer are different from that of a solid. Try a solid or a precomp!

Trent

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

[Trent Armstrong]

Sometimes it’s just necessary to include the value of the transform property as well.

Try replacing with this line:

xyz = position.valueAtTime(0) – thisComp.layer(“leader”).position.valueAtTime(0) + value;

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

[Trent Armstrong]

I don’t like to take away from the Creative Cow site, but I have some rough tutorials at aetutorials.net that I will be moving to The Cow soon.

This is for working out a countdown with non-fixed with fonts.
https://web.me.com/pxlguy/AEtutorials/easycountdown.html

Trent

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

[Trent Armstrong]

As always, Dan is very elegant with his expressions.

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

[Trent Armstrong]

You’ll have to use a Text Layer for this. The Numbers Effect doesn’t work.

You will probably have to use a separate layer for each number, but the technique should work.

Use “String()” to change your number to a string and then you “myNumber.substring()” to pick which value you want to display for that layer.

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

[Trent Armstrong]

Hey,

Until you find a way to break each layer apart, you might look into a 2.5D solution with a few angles from your Sketchup scene. VideoCopilot.net has a great tutorial on projection mapping to achieve this.

It doesn’t give you full 360 3D, but you can get away with some nice subtle moves.

My suggestion for Sketchup is to try and isolate each edge by turning others off and render a still of each piece that you can then reassemble in AE.

Trent

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

[Trent Armstrong]

Are you interested in the actual position of the other letters changing?

If you just want all the letters to stay in the same place but not overlap, you could do a precomped animation of several hand-picked letters that you can squeeze horizontally to fit in the space until the “I” is required.

If you want the spacing between the letters to change, you might be able to set up an expression to check the letters. If the letter is not “I”, the position of all the other letters is changed so they can make room for the wider letter.

Trent

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

[Trent Armstrong]

temp = <opacity value>;

if (temp == 18) 0 else 18


OR


temp = <opacity value>;
Min = 0;
Max = 18;
value1 = 18;
value2 = 0;

linear(temp, Min, Max, value1, value2) 

If you’re using Hold Keyframes, you could use an IF statement. Otherwise you could use linear().

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

[Trent Armstrong]

cam = -thisComp.layer("Camera 1").transform.xRotation;
nul = -thisComp.layer("Null 2").transform.xRotation;
cam + nul

Not trying to interfere with the genius of Dr. Ebberts, but the following code worked for me pretty well.

Trent

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

[Trent Armstrong]

Instead of parenting the particular layer to the Null or person, you should use the pick whip. Pick whip the Y rotation of the Null into the Y rotation of the particle emitter.

I also think you should might be better off using 3D Stroke. You’ll get better trails that way. Parent the 3D stroke layer to the girl, set the stroke up with the taper. Then adjust the rotation of stroke using one of the expressions provided by the other contributors in this thread.

Then duplicate the 3D Stroke layer and bring the end point close to the beginning point to get only one dot.

Trent

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