Easy Animated Trails with Expressions - Expressions 101

[@jlindsay0709]

I have been using After Effects for what ten years now and I would simply copy and paste Dan Ebberts's creative cow expressions. I would change the variables but honestly, this is the first time variables like "index" and "time" actually made sense. Zach, you are a great teacher! I might have to take Expression Session in the future.

[@fgarciaish]

Joseph Lindsay I’ve been using AE for ~9 years and copying and pasting Dan Ebbert’s expressions for years. The course is fantastic and this is just a small fraction of the type of new expression knowledge you’ll learn in it. Even a couple of weeks in it already starts to feel invaluable to anyone who uses AE for much of their work.

[@LoganPinney]

Zack is a friggin genius! Can confirm expression sessions pushed my skills to the next level! He goes into serious detail about this and a ton of crutial expression coding. Thank you so much Zack (&Nol!)🙌🙏🙏

[@marykirmo]

So great to know. I’ve been considering the course.

[@benjamindu7954]

Love how well Zack explains everything. You can tell he's a great teacher.

[@nikolasgarcianikomanga]

One of my favorites expressions is this one. Saved me big so many times.

[@user-yl3cc5sz4f]

huge help, expressions are blowing my mind with how much time they save, thank you!

[@hanif72muhammad]

as a programmer learning after effects, this is right in my comfort zone

[@michaelhess8246]

What a freaking awesome tutorial. In content, length and delivery.

[@noicerone]

(Index -1) is really amazing!! I used to do the HARD WAY before But now thanks to School of Motion for making it way easier. Thanks man👍

[@still.rendering]

Index and time are so powerful!

[@JeahnLaffitteAdventures]

The editing on this is on point! So sweet! And Zack… Zack is hilarious!

[@OscarObians]

😮 I do so love expressions in AE. Genius!!

[@iUmarFarooqi]

lol, I never understood expressions before! :D But you sir have explained it so well, that I'll probably be using this expression almost in every project I do from now on.

[@daniell.morales9379]

Thank you so much, School of Motion, you're the best ever!

[@DifferentTurn]

Such an awesome vid and easy going lesson! Thank you very much for your work :)

[@iamvmsulthan]

Expecting. More amazing content just like this video School of motion 😍😍

[@mqms71]

Simply outstanding teaching skills. 🔥

[@richochet]

Brilliant thank you

[@elpalito2000]

Awesome, the expressions are the best, thank you!!!

[@vighneshs5563]

Great video! But won’t echo effect kinda help with the same ?

[@artur_ry]

Thanks!

[@wearestudiotonic]

Super awesome, thanks a lot guys

[@epicfilmz_motion]

Hello. Why not to precomp text layer, then make duplicates and offset them (you can change path/title in precomp and it will be effected on all titles in main comp)?

[@kellykurtzdesign]

Genius Zack :0 :) :0

[@ianmynderup1490]

Is there a way to add opacity over the amount of "trails" through expressions.

[@Jason-vz6hm]

That's my question too. I know there is but what would be the expression

[@thestellarelite]

This is awesome! I've been wanting to do something like this for ages I even have another tutorial for this among my 50000 open tabs that I'll "get to one day..." Anyway this worked smoothly until I got to the slider portion. When I pickwhip the child layer to the slider I get different code populating in the expression and it does not follow the main text layer properly it sits at like 0,0 on the comp. Here's the expression I get: temp = thisComp.layer("Main Text").effect("Time Offset")("Slider"); [temp, temp]

[@frameworks2]

thanks!

[@mennamahmoud4230]

How do i change the end position of each layer. I don't want them to end at the exact position as the parent layer. What if i would like to offset each one of them by 100 pixel for example.

[@WaveApexPoductions]

index - 1 didnt work for me it just gave me an error.. "after effects warning: expression disabled. error at line 1 in property 'position' of layer 6 ('child layer') in comp 'main comp'. error: layer named 'index - 1' is missing or does not exist. it may have been renamed,moved, or deleted, or the name may have been mistyped" also when I pick whipped to the slider it just replaced the code with "temp = thisComp.layer("main text").effect("time offset")("Slider"); [temp, temp]"- not sure what I'm doing wrong if anyone has any suggestions???

[@mnitant]

Why not use echo ?

[@schoolofmotion]

Great question! In simple cases you can just use echo, but it wouldn't work as well here. The main text layer has a fill on it, while all of the child layers just have a stroke. There's no way to do that with echo. Additionally, with this set up you can extend the expressions to allow for things like randomness, offset positions, etc... This is just the tip of the iceberg :)

[@mnitant]

@@schoolofmotion thank you so much ♥️

[@man2596]

I liked this video before I watched it....

[@pennedarts]

me too..

[@JeahnLaffitteAdventures]

Legends!

[@yourfrienddodo]

I liked your comment before I read it, lol

[@man2596]

@@yourfrienddodo 👍😁😁😁

[@subhamkanu]

Why can't we just use the 'echo' effect? :^)

[@rr.studios]

or repeater

[@Vegitofi]

You can use the staggered time expression trick for for any dimension that you can keyframe. I think echo was just a simple way of showing it.

[@diaaameen9463]

1

[@otterbot9806]

Procrastinating my AE work by watching more AE...

[@mayankmaurya8028]

your course value too much and I also think it should be like the always available courses so that I can watch anytime I want rather than register and wait. The course should not be more than like 30 dollars I believe.ThankYou