[Walter Soyka]

You’ll need to make each of the clips the exact same length, then lay them all out in a sequence in a precomp. Make the precomp the exact duration of the sequence.

Place that precomp somewhere in the comp where you have Particular. Use a Sprite or Textured Polygon as your particle type, choose your precomp layer as the Texture Source, and set its Time Sampling to “Split Clip – Play Once.” You will also need to set the exact number of clips.

There’s more in the docs here:
https://www.redgiant.com/user-guide/trapcode-particular/particle-texture-group/

[Walter Soyka]

Ctrl+Backtick (PC) or Cmd+Backtick (macOS) will expand/collapse selected layers in the timeline, selected Effects in the ECP, and selected folders in the Project panel.

[Walter Soyka]

This works in your AEP:

indexProperty = thisProperty.propertyGroup(1).propertyIndex;
mask1 = content("Ellipse 1").content(indexProperty-1).path;
point1 = linear(time, 0, 2, mask1.points()[0], mask1.points()[1]);
point2 = linear(time, 0, 2, mask1.points()[1], mask1.points()[2]);
point3 = linear(time, 0, 2, mask1.points()[2], mask1.points()[3]);
point4 = linear(time, 0, 2, mask1.points()[3], mask1.points()[0]);
createPath(points = [point1, point2, point3, point4], inTangents = mask1.inTangents(), outTangents = mask1.outTangents(), isClosed = true);

But the tangents will probably not work the way you expect. How do you want this animation to work?

[Walter Soyka]

Can you post your AEP so I can see what you’ve got set up?

[Walter Soyka]

You’re welcome!

I published an “advanced odometer” project a few years back that might also be helpful to you:

https://f1.creativecow.net/file.php?id=5194&folder=advanced-odometer

[Walter Soyka]

Clear your cache. Edit > Purge > All memory and disk cache.

[Walter Soyka]

Use the modulo operator (%). This throws away the quotient and returns the remainder after integer division.

For example, 27 % 10 = 7. More to your point, 1328 % 100 = 28.

[Walter Soyka]

Did you convert your Ellipse path from a parametric path to a Bezier path?

Also, you’re redefining point1 over and over; I think you want to change those to the other 3 points, like this:

indexProperty = thisProperty.propertyGroup(1).propertyIndex;
mask1 = content(indexProperty-1).path;
point1 = linear(time, 0, 2, mask1.points()[0], mask1.points()[1]);
point2 = linear(time, 0, 2, mask1.points()[1], mask1.points()[2]);
point3 = linear(time, 0, 2, mask1.points()[2], mask1.points()[3]);
point4 = linear(time, 0, 2, mask1.points()[3], mask1.points()[0]);
createPath(points = [point1, point2, point3, point4], inTangents = mask1.inTangents(), outTangents = mask1.outTangents(), isClosed = true);

[Walter Soyka]

Your expression needs to look at both the left-most coordinate of Line 1 and the left-most coordinate of Line 2, and use whichever is “lefter” (the smaller of the two X positions).

Here’s some sample code:

L1 = thisComp.layer("Line 1");
rect1 = L1.sourceRectAtTime(time,false);
L2 = thisComp.layer("Line 2");
rect2 = L2.sourceRectAtTime(time,false);
x = Math.min(L1.toComp([rect1.left+525,0])[0], L2.toComp([rect2.left+525,0])[0]);
[x, 540]

[Walter Soyka]

You don’t need the .propertySpec business, and if you want to add keyframes, you need to uset setValueAtTime(). Here’s some sample code to set an opacity keyframe at 50% on the first layer of the first item in the project at its current time:

var myLayer = app.project.item(1).layer(1);
var myProperty = myLayer.opacity;
myProperty.setValueAtTime(myLayer.containingComp.time, 50);