[Walter Soyka]

A lot of Ae rigs like this use time-remapping to let you choose a particular frame from a comp. When you animate a controlling slider from the pose in frame 1 to the pose in frame 3, it passes by the pose in frame 2.

To have the mouth shape interpolate between two arbitrary mouth shapes, you have two options that I see:

1) Build your mouth shape such that every pose of the mouth can be created by adjusting the same set of properties. Then we can use valueAtTime to get the value of each property at the outgoing and incoming pose, and have Ae interpolate between them. You’ll have to use the new Master Properties features and some expressions to “push” the pose value into the rigged comp.

2) Animate all 30 transitions by hand (1-2, 1-3, 1-4, 1-5, 1-6, 2-1, 2-3, etc.) on the same timeline and use time-remapping expressions to “pull” the correct sequence from the rigged comp.

Can you share the rigged mouth shape comp you’ve built?

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

The Stroke effect works on masks, not on the alpha channel of a layer.

You could use the Stroke layer style to do what you’re describing, though.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

After Effects added expression access to path properties in Ae CC v15.0 (2018). With that, we can use expressions to position shape layers at specific points on the path. We can get those points by percentage with maskPath.pointOnPath(), which makes this sort of stretchy ribbon effect pretty straightforward:

[image]

Here’s a sample project:
13326_dotsonapath.aep.zip

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

Check out this recent thread:
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/2/1136777

Toward the bottom, I posted a sample that uses a slider and an expression to govern a palette. Let me know what questions you have after you take a look.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

[Wouter Dijkstra] “When there is a lot of layers parented to other layers, using the “absolute-expression” will always make the layer shift? Is that correct?”

Yes, and here’s what’s happening. When you make one layer a child of another, it assumes the coordinate system of its parent. When Ae renders the layer, it works through all the transformations for the layer: its transformations relative to its parent, its parent’s transformations relative to its grandparent, and so on.

When you ask for the absolute value in comp space, Ae will happily return it to you — but remember, Ae is following its parenting logic for transforms, and that requires coordinates to be relative to the parent’s layer space. Your expression causes the jump because you are smashing two separate frames of reference together.

Using the point control lets you see the value in a way that doesn’t actually affect the transform chain.

Does that make sense?

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

[Wouter Dijkstra] “But maybe I was understanding the “absolute position” wrong. Now all the time when I enter the expression the layer “shifts” position. I was hoping that you could enter an expression to Parented layers which would keep everything exactly the same, but would show the absolute values. “

If you want to see the values without them affecting the placement of the object, add a Point Control effect to the layer and put the expression there. If you apply the expression to a live property like Position or Anchor Point, it will calculate and affect the placement of the layer.

[Wouter Dijkstra] “For example: When I attach a “NULL” object to the camera I want to use this NULL to track the camera-lens center. But the values are relative. How can I make sure I get the absolute values for this null, but keep it in the same position?”

This expression replaces a parent link. Don’t make null a child of the camera. Use the expression instead to get the comp-space coordinates of its point of interest.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

[Wouter Dijkstra] “I have a bridge and I parented the bridge layer (bridge.layer) to a NULL rotating. Than from another composition I want to make the “whole” composition of the bridge move with this bridge.layer. “

You want to apply the expression to the position property of the layer that you want to move, and change it a little bit so that it refers to the comp and layer you want. Replace the names in quotes with your correct comp and layer names:

l = comp("The Main Comp").layer("Bridge");
l.toComp(l.anchorPoint);

I mocked up a quick example:

13322_absolutepositionreferenceacrosscomps.aep.zip

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

What do you ultimately want to do with the absolute position?

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

That expression should work, but you should use it in the referring layer, not apply it to the child layer.

Can you describe how you’re setting your project up?

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

Congrats, Bill. Sounds like a wild ride!

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]