Copy/Pasting Amount value

I have searched in the forum and read through the Export, Convert and ValueNode pages in the documentation but I still can’t work out how to achieve one of the most common requirements in my animations, which is copy/pasting Amount Values from one object/Group to another.

Attached is an example project ‘traffic light’ which I created to show what I mean. I would like each light to fade in over 6 frames, hold for 1 second, then fade out over 6 framestraffic light.sifz (1.53 KB).
First I animate the Amount value on the green light, and then I would like to use these values and timing again on the orange and red lights.
Ideally I would like to use something like the Rotate/Translate/Scale adjustment layers, except for opacity - i.e.

  1. apply and group Opacity adjustment layer with green light
  2. set waypoints
  3. copy Opacity adjustment layer
  4. paste onto (and group with) orange light
  5. select waypoints on the copied Opacity layer
  6. slide them forward in time.

…but I haven’t discovered an Opacity adjustment layer yet…

I am able to export the Amount values, of course, but I can only work out how to link them, so I can’t then adjust the values independently once they’re on my target layer - if I change the timing of the orange light, the green light changes too.

In this particular case, where each light has exactly the same timing (only delayed), I could perhaps export and link Amount values but add a 1s time delay, though I don’t know how to do that either!

Obviously it’s no problem to do manual animation of Amount values when you’re only dealing with three coloured circles, but for more complex animations it’s an incredible waste of time. I’m guessing that I’m either misunderstanding the Export function, or is there another method which I haven’t heard about yet?
How do you achieve this effect?

Hello,

i think you can do that by using the time loop convertion

first, how to link two value ?:

  1. export the data (has you did with green opacity)
  2. open the library panel and select your exported value
  3. select orange layer, open parameters panel, select opacity parameter
  4. right click, and select connect

now, the two light are linked has you can see … coool, but that’s not what you want … so here we go
has we connect the values, before, you need to unconnect
5) select orange layer, open parameters panel, select opacity parameter
6) right click, and select unconnect

here we go again :wink:
7) right click, select convert, choose Time Loop
8 ) open Amount parameter, select Link, right click and connect
9) a frame 0, set Local Time and Duration to 0
10) enabled animation mode, choose default interpolation to clamped
11) move the time cursor to 00:01:07 . This is when the orange animation will start
12) set Local Time to 00:01:07 and Duration to 00:02:14 … (Local Time + green stop animation Duration)

Hello cameralibre.

“time loop” is definitely one way to go.

It can be used to delay the value of 1 animated property (incl. amount) as ilustrated in attached “disco” group spots (amount > convert > time loop + connect “link” parameter to exported original property), just like d.j.a.y. explained.

It can also be used to repeat a pattern of bliking that you may want less regular, as in attached “traffic” group, where orange is actually much shorter than green and red (via new layer > time loop).

It can also be used to control the “state” of a group, as in this lipsync tutorial @8:59, animating the “duration” of the time loop layer to switch from one mouth position to another (define 3 keyframes “red, green, blue”, and loop on the frame you want by animating the time loop values).

hope this helps.
B.

example as gif (click/open for proper view, don’t know why it displays funny in the forum view)
blink lights.gif
blink lights.sifz (2.11 KB)

thanks for your help!
d.j.a.y, I followed your suggestion and the orange and red lights animated on with exactly the same timing as the green, only later. great!
however, I wanted to start with no lights on, and on the first frame the orange and red lights were at full opacity and they faded out as the green faded in.
Also, at 3s21, when the red faded out, the orange faded back in again.

I didn’t know how to set it so that the orange and red lights only perform the green light’s animation once - but thanks to the tutorial berteh linked to, I learned how to keyframe the Duration and Link parameters to reference frames when the green light was either fully opaque or fully transparent.
It’s a great tutorial by the way, ricardograca also has very clear portuguese for non-native speakers to understand.

I am slowly beginning to understand timeloop!
see attached project:
traffic light timeloop.sifz (1.77 KB)

now to use this on something more complicated than a traffic light…

playing with Local Time and Duration should to the work

set again Local Time and Duration to 0

like all of us i think :wink: