After Effects: Getting world space coordinates of parented null

[jporter313 0]

Hi, I have a hierarchy in After Effects and I'm trying to lock a position parameter of a spherize effect on another layer to a Null that I have parented into the hierarchy, getting the sphere to follow the Null. Because the null is parented, I need to find it's world space for the expression to work since it's position values con't change when it moves. I've found several references to this expression:

 

lay = (pickwhip the child null layer) ;

pos = lay.toWorld( lay.anchorPoint);

 

Such as here:

 

http://www.videocopilot.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=24113

 

Seems to work for everyone else, but when I implement it, I get this error:

 

After Effects warning: Function lay.toWorld is undefined Expression disabled.

 

Error occured at line 2.

Comp 'XXXXXXXX'

Layer 17 ('HelmetReflectionAnimated')

Property: 'Center of Sphere'

 

Any ideas what I might be missing?

[Mylenium 0]

What exactly? Post your own code. Not much point in referencing other people's template code when you could be doing something as trivial as having a typo somewhere in your own variation...

 

Mylenium

[blacker 0]

Just a thought - did you copy and paste the code from a web page? That will sometimes cause problems - best to paste in a text editor first, then cut and paste from there.

[iline 0]

Please, please do a site-specific Google search of this forum next time! I personally have answered this one three times, and much as it should be a sticky, it isn't. THREAD

 

You haven't put the array at the end of the code, even if the function were defined. Your code should look like this:

 

lay = thisComp.layer("Parent NULL")

wrld=lay.toWorld(lay.anchorPoint);

[wrld[0],wrld[1]]

[jporter313 0]

Sorry guys it's been really busy this week. I figured out the problem a bit after posting this. In case anyone needs the answer, the expression I used was:

 

lay = PICKWHIP TARGET LAYER;
lay.toWorld(lay.transform.anchorPoint);

 

The problem seems to have been the "pos =" part, don't know where that came from in the examples.

 

iline, I did search for this, didn't have much luck, maybe I was just searching using the wrong terms.

 

Thanks for the help guys.

[iline 0]

Dude, it's almost impossible to find it. I tried myself for a good ten minutes, so I don't blame you.