[Walter Soyka]

After Effects defaults to opening all comps that were open when the project was saved.

If you hold Shift while Ae is opening the project, it will load the project without opening any of the comps.

[Walter Soyka]

So you don’t want the number to update on-screen every frame?

You can use posterizeTime to adjust the rate at which the expression operates. For example, to update the string 5 times per second (instead of natively at the comp’s frame rate), add this as your first line of code in your expression:

posterizeTime(5);

[Walter Soyka]

That’s called motion blur, and it simulates the effect of an object moving during the camera’s exposure of the frame. There’s a switch in Ae to enable it for individual layers (and for the comp viewer), and some comp settings to control its parameters.

See here for more:

https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/user-guide.html/after-effects/using/assorted-animation-tools.ug.html#main-pars_heading_6

[Walter Soyka]

It looks like that expression is supposed to be applied to the layer’s source text property directly, not to the range selector Start property.

[Walter Soyka]

Or, better yet, check out Overlord. It’s my favorite way to work from Illustrator into After Effects, by far:

https://www.battleaxe.co/overlord

[Walter Soyka]

If you import an Illustrator file as footage instead of a composition, you can choose either Merged Layers or a specific layer from the file.

Alternately, import it as a composition anyway, cut and paste the layers you need from there and drop them in your main comp, then delete the imported comp.

[Walter Soyka]

Sure, you can link the rotation of the earpieces to the velocity of the head movement with an expression. You can customize the values in the first two lines to get the feel you want, and you should change the third line to point to the position property of the layer you want to track:

var rotationMax = 80;
var velocityMax = 3000;
var trackProperty = thisComp.layer("Circle").transform.xPosition;
linear(trackProperty.velocityAtTime(time - thisComp.frameDuration/10), -velocityMax, velocityMax, -rotationMax, rotationMax);

[Walter Soyka]

I think the “right” way to do this is to select a layer, press the I key to set the CTI to its in point, and then apply the animator.

If you really just have these two keyframes, you could apply this expression to all those properties:

try {
	var timeOffset = inPoint - thisProperty.key(1).time;
	valueAtTime(time - timeOffset);
} catch (err) { value; }

[Walter Soyka]

Does the project reference any assets in a Creative Cloud library?

[Walter Soyka]

Sometimes writing code is necessary to achieve a very specific procedural effect, but there’s a lot you could do with plugin like Trapcode Form and layer maps without ever writing a single line.