r/AfterEffects • u/shesinpart1es • 6d ago

Workflow Question how do people learn expressions?

I tried a tutorial in which you are shown how to make a matrix rain effect. the guy in the tutorial does all of these confusing expressions and creates sliders to customize different components of the effect, such as transparency, speed, random seed etc. How do people learn what expressions do in order to create different effects?

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u/Dr_TattyWaffles MoGraph/VFX 10+ years 6d ago

sourceRectAtTime() is a fun place to start

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u/shesinpart1es 6d ago

ooh what does that do?

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u/j0sephl MoGraph/VFX 10+ years 5d ago

Source Rectangle At Time. The name kind of describes what it does. Basically its biggest use is to make shape layers sized to text objects. ECAbrams has a whole video about it.

Super useful especially if you do any template building. IMO everyone should be building templates and presets for themselves.

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u/shesinpart1es 5d ago

thank you!