After Effects CS3  |  Go to CS4 Help

Example: Create a trail of images

This example expression instructs a layer to be at the same position as the next higher layer in the Timeline panel, but delayed by a specified amount of time (in this case, 0.5 seconds). You can set similar expressions for the other geometric properties.

  1. Start with two solid-color layers that are scaled to approximately 30% of the composition size. (See Create or modify a solid-color layer.)
  2. Animate the position of the first layer. (See Creating and modifying motion paths.)
  3. Select the second layer, press P to reveal the Position property, and Alt-click (Windows) or Option-click (Mac OS) the stopwatch button to the left of the property name.
  4. Enter the following in the expression field: 
      thisComp.layer(thisLayer, -1).position.valueAtTime(time - .5)
  5. Duplicate the last layer five times by selecting it and pressing Ctrl+D (Windows) or Command+D (Mac OS) five times.

All layers follow the same path, and each is delayed 0.5 seconds from the previous.


Comments

Comments are no longer accepted for After Effects CS3. After Effects CS4 is the current version. To discuss After Effects CS3, please use the Adobe forum.

 

Send me an e-mail when comments are added to this page | Comment Report

Current page: http://livedocs.adobe.com/en_US/AfterEffects/8.0/WS3878526689cb91655866c1103906c6dea-7a15.html