Posts by patrickjansen

http://vimeo.com/channels/222304

interesting, that should keep me entertained for a while.

i’ve only just started digging more into AE and only recently discovered the possibility of scripting for values, so I’m still just exploring the waters and what it can do and what is different from flash. At this moment i’m too new with AE possibilities to give a real opinion about any of it, but it does look extremely promising.

The suggestion you describe, breaking my brain for now, not very familiar yet with “layer space”, “composition space” and the 3D and camera workings … but if i understood correctly you link multiple instances of the stickmen to multiple null-s, then use the different null position values as base/input for the stitckmen circle-position/angle.

Would that mean still manually creating like 10 stickmen and 10 nulls. That’s a remaining thing which i was wondering about… is it possible to create like 50 stickmen dynamically? like i’d do with flash something like

var A=[]; for(var i=0;i<50;i++){ A[i] = new stickmencomposition(); addChild(A[i] }

tnx for the feedback, i can see you know what you’re talking about, thoroughly, and do appreciate the details of your answers, that’s a rare nice thing to see … I only wish I were up to a higher level already so i could brainstorm up to speed with you

What do you mean each Comp B? There is only one Comp B! There are several layer’s whose source is an instance of Comp B, but there is one single Comp B and any changes you make to it will be propagated to all of its instances. An instance is an instance and a source is a source. That’s the same in Flash as it is in After Effects.

yes, each “instance” of comp B. But as i’m a little unsure of AE terminology i’ve been describing as best/safe as i could.

So you didn’t need the help at all.

? is that meant in a negative way ? If so, while the hostility??? you’d prefer i just sit back in my couch and wait for someone to hand me over a solution to a problem? No, while awaiting responses I was trying different things to see if they’d do the trick. And I did … so at some point i had a solution … “a” solution, which obviously as you can see from my description of how i usually solve it in flash (an extra one line script) would not be close to the cleanest solution but it would work.

||+521906|felt_tips said-|| It can’t be done like you’re describing it, because if you rotate the stickman in Comp B, then it will rotate the stick man in every single instance of Comp B and you specifically want to achieve a separate rotation of the stickman for each instance (the source of which is a single comp). Therefore your expression has to be on the instance, not in the underlying comp.

really? that’s very disappointing, and a bit unbelievable In Flash this is matter of seconds, in flash you can simply have each Comp B extract how much it has been rotated within its parent with line this.rotation, and then recycle that value into C.rotation = -this.rotation and voila all stickmen upwards.

||+521906|felt_tips said-|| My solution would be to parent the stickman to a null, while keeping the stickman instance’s anchorpoint in the middle and then setting the position rather than the rotation with expressions.

Yeah, I had already achieved a similar way by simply giving each instance of “B” an expression for X and Y position based on a “angle=X” for each one and then calculating math.sin/cos for each with a radius of e.g. 100.

ps in the links I put the green square and red square to show “C” in “B” and to the left the stickmen circle result in “A”

Hey felt_tips, thanx for the effort to solve this puzzle, I appreciate it and from the amount you explain you took some time. But still not what I meant, the way you describe you’re placing the 10 stickmen manually at their positions, The way I do that it becomes automated and an exact/perfect circle

I think everybody is misinterpreting what I want, i’ll try to explain a little more, I don’t want the stickmen to move at all, they’re supposed to stand still in a circle but facing with their heads upwards. Nothing more nothing less at this moment. The links I gave show the difference between what I have and what I want.

I’m not actually using stickmen, nor 360 copies, but just to avoid answer “do it manually” i describe it this way.

What I do is what I describe

1) create a 50×50 comp “C” with a stickman

2) create a 200×200 comp “B” and place “C” in it… then drag “C” to the top-middle of comp “B”

3) create a e.g 500×500 comp “A” (size doesn’t matter) and place 10 items of “B” in it, and give each “B” a rotation to create a perfect circle (0, 36, 72, 108 degrees etc)

At this point I have the first link, 10 stickmen in a perfect circle. Because in “B” the stickmen “C”’s position was offset (to the top-middle), in “A” they create a circle with the radius of that exact offset. The further I dragged “C” away from the middle of comp “B”s center, the larger the circle.

They’re not supposed to move or animate, only facing their heads upwards (which they don’t, see the link). What I want at this point is to get from link 1 to link 2 -> I need all of them to correct their heads upwards.

The easiest way to describe what I’m looking for (not using terminology but simple words) is this -> since A has ten items of B with manual rotations, each “B” should do a correction on it’s internal stickman “C” rotation so that each stickman faces upward again.

That “could” happen if each “B” “knows/extracts” how much it himself has been rotated (manually in “A”), and then apply that same value negative to “C”, basically applying something like I would in flash

C.rotation = -this.rotation

Sorry if my descriptions are difficult, I’m not a AE expert so still struggle to get things sorted out.

i’m not sure if I’m explaining properly. I’ll try again. Remember this is only a sample of what I’m doing, it’s not literal

1) I create a comp “C” of 50×50 pixels with a stickman in it.

2) I place it in a comp “B” of 200×200 pixels and place it glued to the top of the comp “B”.

3) Then I create a comp “A” of 200×200 and place 360 instances of comp “B” in it and manually rotate each a degree so I get a full circle of 360 stickmen.

At this point I want comp “B” to automatically adust its internal instance of “A” back so that each stickmen is with his head upwards

does that make more sense? and if so, is there some/any efficient way?

anybody?