With that covered, what about in the case of the wiggle expression? With a wiggle, we’re instructing the property, whether the scale, opacity, or position, to wiggle within the set parameters. An example of a script-not an expression. For example, this script tells the application (the application being After Effects) to position the anchor point of this layer to the center, the right, or the top. Now, unlike a script, which tells the application to do something, an expression will inform the individual property to do something.
ADOBE AFTER EFFECT EXPRESSION CODE
First, before we look at what the wiggle expression does, we must ask: What is an expression? An expression is a piece of JavaScript code that you can insert into the animated properties of your media. ("CONTROL") - from the layer property it finds the layer called 'CONTROL' layer accesses the 'layer' property of 'thisComp' Here is a breakdown of the individual elements of this expression thisComp - specify that we are accessing the current open compositoin
If you have a layer called ‘CONTROL’ with a Slider Control effect called ‘Slider Control’ attached to it and you link to this Expression Control, the expression created for you will probably be thisComp.layer("CONTROL").effect("Slider Control")("Slider") When you link an effect parameter to an Expression Control with the pickwhip tool, After Effects will automatically create the expression to retrieve the correct value for you. For example, you cannot link an angle to a checkbox or a colour to a slider. The only thing to watch out for is that the parameter you want to link matches the type of the expression control. If you then animate the value of the slider, you will automatically animate the value of all the linked effect parameters. In the above example I am linking the Transition Completion parameters of a number of layers to a single slider Expression Control. This will automatically create the correct expression that tells After Effects to derive the value for this parameter from the value of the expression control :)
ADOBE AFTER EFFECT EXPRESSION HOW TO
An expression (as opposed to an Expression Control) is a simple code expression that tells After Effects how to calculate the value for this parameter.īut you don’t need worry about that now! All you have to do is to click and drag the pickwhip icon from the effect onto the value of your Expression Control. This will enable the expression for the parameter. To link the value of an Expression Control to any effect parameter on any other layer, alt-click on the stopwatch icon next to the effect parameter you want to link. However, you can link up the value of a slider to the opacity of 20 layers and then, by animating the value of a single slider control, you can change the opacity of all those 20 layers simultaneously – that is the power of Expression Controls :) They are merely containers for a value of a certain type (continuous, on/off, angle, colour, etc) that you can change and keyframe.
These controls includeĮxpression Controls are simple controls that do nothing at all by themselves.
There are a number of expression controls that you can find in the Effects and Presets window in Adobe After Effects. Learn all about these useful helpers in this YouTube video! Enjoy :) Setting up Expression Controls in Adobe After Effects This is where Expression Controls come in handy! I’ve always enjoyed building rather complex VFX in After Effects with lots of layers and animated properties all over the place! However, once you reach a certain level of complexity, it can be hard to manage or modify your effect without having to reshuffle all of your keyframes.