Intro

What is an After Effects Expression?

Benefits of Using Expressions

Keyframes vs Expressions

Unlock New Features

Time Is Money

Expressions Aren't Always the Solution

If It's Easy To Keyframe, Just Keyframe It!

Lesson 101 Wrap Up

Thank You!

Intro

Wiggle

Time

Posterize Time

Loop Out

Math Round

Value To Fixed

Opposite Math

Random

Maintain Scale While Parented

Delay

Expression Controls

Intro

Statements in JavaScript

The do expression proposal

Functions as expressions

Classes are expressions

AST Explorer

What is AST?

Summary of expression statements

Summary

Conclusion

Caleb Ward: Hey, what's up. This is Caleb, but with school of motion and in this effects tutorial, I'm gonna show you five unique ways to use expressions. And after-effects now this tutorial is going to cover some different ways in which you can use expressions that you may not have used in the past. So if you're ready to learn something new, let's.hop in. Now, this tutorial is all about unique ways to use expressions. This isn't expressions one-on-one. If you want to learn how to use expressions on a more fundamental and basic level, go check out our expressions one-on-one tutorial. So let's kind of hop into our first example here. So you may be familiar with the loop expression. In fact, we put together a tutorial a couple months ago. That was all about how to use the loop expression and after effects and the loop expressions. Fantastic, because it can do so many different things, but the loop expression [] that really stuck out to me was the offset loop.

Caleb Ward: And just a quick refresher, if you don't remember what the offset loop does, basically, if you kind of envision this triangle moving here, let's say it moves from here to here over the course of a second. If you use a loop offset, it will basically take that data and add it to the end of your animation so that it will continue along that path. And that's exactly what we're going to do here. So I'm going to go down here and I'm going to set a key frame for, let's say the 12 frame mark, and actually.let me take this time to say that you can actually go download the project files for this tutorial over at school emotion. So you can follow along and kind of set the key frames with me. I find that I learn a lot better that way. So, you know, you can go do that over, uh, at school emotion.

Caleb Ward: There should be a link in the description of this video. So let's say that we want this triangle to move across the screen. So I'm going to set a key frame at the 12 frame mark, and then I'm going to move forward to, let's just pick a random spot here. Let's pick.the two second mark, and then we'll kind of pull this up here to like right about there. And you know, if we play this back, like obviously the triangle is just going to like come to rest right there. But if we hold down option and hit the stopwatch right there, we can type in loop out, open parentheses and then quotation marks and we'll say offset and the quotation marks in currencies. And semi-colon so, so now if we kind of script through here, you can see that triangle just kind of continues along the same path, [] but here's the cool thing because we use the loop offset.

Caleb Ward: We can actually manipulate these key frame values here to change the speed in which the triangle goes across the page. So check this out. So now it's going a little bit faster because the key frame was moved closer to the, the first key frame. So now it's going to go really quickly across the screen. This is a really cool technique because traditionally, if you wanted to manipulate something over.the course of time, you would think that you want to use the time expression and the time expression honestly is kind of lacking. Whereas this expression allows you to change values very easily. If you wanted to adjust a time expression, you'd have to basically go down here into the expression editor and type in, you know, time. And you'd have to change it from, let's say 40 to like, you know, 55 and then you'd have to like go out of the expression editor and you just have to go back and forth if you wanted to change the speed.

Intro

The calm before the storm

Down to earth

Plain as day

Crying wolf

Body-related Idioms

Wrap your head around something

Raise the bar/raise the ante

Make a long story short

Next Steps