Adobe After Effects CS3 - Manual (Page 559)

AFTER EFFECTS CS3
User Guide
554
• Type /* at the beginning of the comment and */ at the end of the comment. Any text between /* and */ is
ignored. For example:
/* This is a
multiline comment. */
Save and reuse expressions
Once you have written an expression, you can save it for future use by copying and pasting it into a text-editing appli-
cation or by saving it in an animation preset or template project. However, because expressions are written in relation
to other layers in a project and may use specific layer names, you must sometimes modify an expression to transfer
it between projects.
You can define your own functions within expressions using normal JavaScript function syntax. In this example, a
function is defined that calculates the average of two values, and the last line uses this function:
function average(a, b)
{
return (a + b) / 2;
}
average(position, thisComp.layer(1).position);
Note that you must define each function fully within each expression in which it is used; there is no global library of
functions that you can add to.
If you want to save an expression for use in another project, you should add comments to the expression. You should
also use variables so that you can change a value in one place rather than having to change it in several places.
For example, this expression has a multiline comment at the beginning that explains what the expression does and a
short comment after a variable is declared and initialized that tells what the variable is for:
/* This expression on a Source Text property reports the name
of a layer and the value of its Opacity property. */
var myLayerIndex = 1; // layer to inspect, initialized to 1, for top layer
thisComp.layer(myLayerIndex).name + ": \rOpacity = " +
thisComp.layer(myLayerIndex).opacity.value
You can save an animation preset that includes an expression and reuse it in other projects, as long as the expression
does not refer to properties that don’t exist in the other projects. When you save a preset in which a property has an
expression but no keyframes, only the expression is saved. If the property has one or more keyframes, the saved
preset will contain the expression along with all keyframe values.
You can copy an expression from a layer property, with or without the property’s keyframes. Copying an expression
without keyframes is particularly useful when you want to simultaneously copy multiple expressions and paste them
onto one or more new layers, or when you want to copy one expression and paste it onto more than one layer.
• To copy an expression and keyframes from one property to other properties, select the source layer property in
the Timeline panel, copy the layer property, select the target layer properties, and paste.
• To copy an expression from one property to other properties without copying keyframes, select the source
property, choose Edit > Copy Expression Only, select the target properties, and paste.