Hi there. I've been writing a script that brings a particular camera rig I use from Maya to AE. When I create some named nulls etc. the comp defaults to source names ('Null 1', 'Null 2' etc.). Is there a line I can put in my script to toggle the source names over to layer names? Just so that when I ...

great work Gimmel. i love the fact the follower can inherit velocity around the leader and orbit for a short period of time.

i was looking at flash actionscripts that acheived this effect but couldn't translate the code as couldn't find a way of storing variables globally.

again, great

here it is P = thisComp.layer("leader").position; delay = 0.8; // link to a slider for easy tweaking de = delay*thisComp.frameDuration*(index-thisComp.layer("leader").index); F = thisComp.layer(index-1).position.valueAtTime(time-de); xyz = position.valueAtTime(0) - thisComp.layer...

okay, here's what i have now. looking much more fun. create a vertical column of about 5 solids, each 100 x 100. switch all the layers to 3D (if you desire 3 dimensional movement). change the top layer name to "leader". apply this to the position property of each layer below in the stack: ...

fantastic. that now works perfectly for a following layer.

Yes, as you said, I'd like to achieve a layer following the motion from the layer above's motion, not the leader keyframes. I'll have a play over the weekend. have a nice one yourself.

Jovial

cracking work Dan :D That's grrrreat. I'm trying to get layers to follow another leader layer and inherit the same spring from velocity. I revised your script as follows (so that the layer looked at "leader"s position keyframes): n = 0; if (thisComp.layer("leader").position.numKe...

I've also been after something similar here. Ebberts' original code creates the spring effect from the in/start point of the layer. Varangian's variation on the script applies preset spring values afrter the last key frame on a move. Is there any way of having a layer follow every keyframe (not just...

Hi vranan, I'm looking into something like this myself. Aiming to offset layers in time based on a greyscale/displacement layer. The way I see this happenning is sampling a colour/greyscale value at a specific co-ordinate and feeding that value into an expression as a percentage of your offset. Appa...

Cheers. I'll look into it.

Hi Dan, Pleasure to have you help me out. Motionscript is where my love of expressions all started. Wasn't aware of the 'copy expression only' which I can see being a very helpful feature indeed. The text file option, does that mean I can write an expression in a text file then link to that from a l...

Hi all, First post, here goes: Can I write an expression as a function object in a null layer and then call that function from any other layer. Dividing an image into tens/almost hundreds of fragments in illustrator so only want to have to change one script which will be reflected in all subsequent ...