[Yan Trudel]

Once again, you save the day!

Thanks Dan, it works perfectly now! 🙂

[Yan Trudel]

Thanks Dan!

Since I’m not the expert, I sometimes forget I can reference directly into comps… Seems like it was rather simple but greatly appreciate the help! ☺

I’ve used the expression you gave me to measure the total width like this :

j = comp(“Precomp_JOUR”).layer(“boite_jour”).sourceRectAtTime(time,false);
h = comp(“Precomp_HEURE”).layer(“boite_heure”).sourceRectAtTime(time,false);

h.width+j.width;

Now going to work on getting it to center automatically. Thanks again!

[Yan Trudel]

Oh, rookie mistake!
I’m going to try it out now!

[Yan Trudel]

Thanks for the quick response Dan! By the way, you’ve been answering so many expressions questions I have had over the year so thanks for that too!

I had actually tried sourceRectAtTime() but since the result of those 2 boxes is precomposed, it gives me the width of that composition.

In my current build I use sourceRectAtTime() for each of the boxes with the text; one is right aligned and the other left aligned. They are in different compositions that are then juxtaposed. I’m actually trying to figure out the total length so I can always center the result of the combined width of the boxes since it can vary a lot :

Although maybe my approach might be where I’m going wrong here?

[Yan Trudel]

Thanks for the answer Ad,

Although, it wan’t quite what I was looking for. I’ve been using Inertial Bounce for a while now and am familiar with the expression. Although it offers a nice and smooth alternative, using it alone was a little too bouncy for what I needed to create.

The movement of the sign wasn’t really the puzzle for me, rather than the natural feel of the ropes holding it. I finally ended up playing around with a couple of the distort effects and ended up with really sweet and natural looking motion. For the sign dropping, I already had a pretty good recipe with combined Newton and Inertial Bounce

I posted the question on the forum last friday and actually was a little short on time and looking for quick answers. When I was told it didn’t need to be finished friday, I took the weekend to relax and came back on monday with a fresh look and everything just fell into place.

Thanks!

[Yan Trudel]

I see my post maybe wasn’t clear enough. But I’ve been working through this and finally figured it out. I was trying to create a variable where I didn’t really need one.

Here’s how the project is built :
2 Main Comps : 1) called “TEXTE” where you input the text (time, title, sub-title), 2) one called “RENDER” where everything happens and where the render come from.

In the “RENDER” comp, it’s a billboard saying “Tonight” and where you have three different times and where the show playing is set beside each time. For each title, I made 3 secondary precomps, one for each possibility : a one line title, a two line title and a title with a sub-title. Everything is well positioned beside the time the show should air and linked to the right text input in the “TEXTE” comp.

I put a little option where the person exporting the billboard could simply insert a “*” to make the title on 2 lines. I simply had to make sure that the right precomp appeared in the “RENDER” comp.

Here’s what i put in the opacity of the precomps :

value=0;
if (comp(“1. TEXTE”).layer(“EMISSION2_TITRE”).text.sourceText.indexOf(“*”)!=-1) {value=100};

or

value=0;
if (comp(“1. TEXTE”).layer(“EMISSION2_TITRE”).text.sourceText.indexOf(“*”)==-1) {value=100};

In other words, the opacity is zero unless AE detects a “*” or doesn’t detect a “*” in the respective layer.

Sorry for the lengthy post, and thanks for helping out! 🙂