Skip to main content
Szalam
Community Expert
Community Expert
March 7, 2024
Open for Voting

Keyframing a layer selection dropdown

  • March 7, 2024
  • 2 replies
  • 553 views

Set Matte, Calculations, Displacement Map - what do these three effects have in common? They all rely on another layer to drive them. There are many other places in After Effects where effects need to refer to other layers and it helps AE be a powerful tool.

However, there's a big limitation.

There is no ability to keyframe this parameter. When referencing another layer, sometimes it'd be lovely to switch what layer it is! I know it'd be a hold keyframe and that's fine. But this seems like a really useful feature to have.

2 replies

Kyle Hamrick
Community Expert
Community Expert
March 19, 2024

+1! Technically you should be able to achieve this by using multiple instances of the effect, and keyframing the Effect Opacity, but ... your idea sounds much smoother.

Participant
March 19, 2024

And refer to other layers by index!