Many of the examples in this section are based on expressionsprovided by Dan Ebberts.
Dan Ebberts provides example expressions and tutorials for learning how to work with expressions on his MotionScript website. For example, Dan provides an excellent page about collision detection.
Colin Braley provides a tutorial and example project on his website that show how to use expressions to make one layer repel others in a natural-seeming manner.
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The AE Enhancers forum provides many examples and much useful information about expressions, as well as scripts and animation presets. In this post on the AE Enhancers forum, Paul Tuersley provides a tutorial and example project that show how to use expressions to animate several layers in a swarm.
Rick Gerard provides an example on his website that demonstrates rolling a square object along a floor so that the sides stay in contact with the floor plane.
Carl Larsen provides a video tutorial on the Creative COW website that demonstrates how to use expressions and parenting to relate the rotation of a set of wheels to the horizontal movement of a vehicle.
Chris Zwar provides an example project on his website for automatically arranging still images or videos into a grid (like a video wall). You can easily adjust position and spacing with sliders that are connected to a system of expressions. There are three compositions in the project—one for stills, one for videos, and one to create an auto-storyboard in which a video is sampled at user-defined intervals and aligned into a grid.
JJ Gifford’s website provides several example projects that demonstrate how to use expressions.
Maltaannon (Jerzy Drozda, Jr.) provides a video tutorial on his website that shows how to use expressions to create a volume meter using the results of the Convert Audio To Keyframes command.
Harry Frank provides a tutorial on his graymachine website that shows how to use expressions to read data from an external text file.
Expression example: Make a layerrevolve in a circle
You can create an expression without usingproperties from other layers. For example, you can make a layerrevolve in a perfect circle.
- Select a layer, press P to reveal its Positionproperty in the Timeline panel, and Alt-click (Windows) or Option-click(Mac OS) the stopwatch to the left of the property name.
You can use the pick whip to link rotationvalues between layers to animate the hands on a clock—as the hourhand moves from hour to hour, the minute hand rotates the full circumferenceof the clock face. This type of animation would take a long timeto create if you had to set each keyframe for both hand layers,but with the pick whip, you can do it in a matter of minutes.
- Import or create two long, narrow solid-colorlayers: an hour hand and a minute hand. (See Solid-colorlayers and solid-color footage items.)
- Set the anchor points at the ends of the layers. (See Layeranchor points.)
- Move the layers so that the anchor points are at thecenter of the composition. (See Movelayers in space.)
- Set Rotation keyframes for the hour hand. (See Setor add keyframes.)
- Select the Rotation property for the minute hand andchoose Animation > Add Expression.
- Drag the pick whip to the Rotation property for the hourhand. The following expression appears:
- To make the minute hand rotate 12 times as fast as thehour hand, add *12 at the end of the expressionas follows:
Expression example: Position onelayer between two others
This example expression positions and maintainsone layer at a balanced distance between two other layers.
Animate the positions of the first two layers in the Timeline panel. (See Motion paths.)
- Select the third layer, press P to reveal the Positionproperty, and Alt-click (Windows) or Option-click (Mac OS) the stopwatch buttonto the left of the property name.
This example expression instructs a layerto be at the same position as the next higher layer in the Timelinepanel, but delayed by a specified amount of time (in this case,0.5 seconds). You can set similar expressions for the other geometric properties.
- Start with two solid-color layers that are scaledto approximately 30% of the composition size. (See Solid-colorlayers and solid-color footage items.)
- Animate the position of the first layer. (See Motionpaths.)
- Select the second layer, press P to reveal the Positionproperty, and Alt-click (Windows) or Option-click (Mac OS) the stopwatch buttonto the left of the property name.
- Duplicate the last layer five times by selecting it andpressing Ctrl+D (Windows) or Command+D (Mac OS) five times.
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All layers follow the same path, and each is delayed0.5 seconds from the previous.
Dan Ebberts provides more examplesand techniques for creating trails of images on his MotionScript website.
Expression example: Create a bulgebetween two layers
This example expression synchronizes the BulgeCenter argument of the Bulge effect in one layer with the positionof another layer. For example, you can create an effect that lookslike a magnifying glass moving over a layer, with the contents underthe magnifying glass bulging as the lens (that is, the overlyinglayer) moves. This expression uses the fromWorld method,which makes the expression work correctly regardless of whetheryou move the magnifying glass layer or the underlying layer. Youcan rotate or scale the underlying layer, and the expression staysintact.
You can also use other effects, such as Ripple, withthis expression.
- Start with two layers. Make one layer a magnifyingglass or similar object with a hole in the middle and name it Magnifier.(See Creatinglayers.)
- Animate the position of the magnifying glass layer. (See Motionpaths.)
- Apply the Bulge effect to the other layer. (See Applyan effect or animation preset.)
- Select the Bulge Center property of the Bulge effectin the Timeline panel and choose Animation > Add Expression,or Alt-click (Windows) or Option-click (Mac OS) the stopwatch buttonfor the property.
- Select the default expression text and type the following:
Expression example: Fade opacityof a 3D layer based on distance from camera
- Apply the following expression to theOpacity property of a 3D layer:
Thefade starts at a distance of 500 pixels from the camera and is completeat 1500 pixels from the camera. The linear interpolationmethod is used to map distance values to opacity values.
Expression example: Make a 3D layerinvisible if facing away from camera
- Apply the following expression to theOpacity property of a 3D layer:
Dan Ebberts explains this expression on his MotionScript website.
Expression example: Flip layerhorizontally if facing away from camera
- Apply the following expression to theScale property of a 3D layer:
Expression example: Animate scaleat each layer marker
- Apply the following expression to aScale property to make a layer wobble at each marker:
Expression example: Start or stopwiggle at specific time
You can use any expression in place of the wiggle expressionused here, to begin and end the influence of any expression at aspecific time.
Apply the following expression to a property to wiggle it beginning at time 2 seconds:
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Apply the following expression to a property to stop wiggling it at time 4 seconds:
Apply the following expression to a property to start wiggling it at time 2 seconds and stop wiggling it at time 4 seconds:
Expression example: Match camerafocal plane to another layer
- Apply the following expression to theFocus Distance property of a camera layer to have its focus distancematch the distance to the anchor point of a layer named “target”:
Dan Ebberts explains this expression example in detailon his Motionscript website.
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