After Effects render order

Question

hey everyone, i hope you are doing great.

I'm trying to understand the render order in After Effects, so I made a composition "containing_comp", inside of it i created a "Null object" with a "slider control effect" on it, and a rectangle "shape layer" that I precomposed it as "nested_comp", after that i linked the scale of the shape layer in the "nested_comp" to the "slider control" on the "Null" in the "containing_comp" and it is working, but according to the render order of the "containing_comp" ,as i understood it, the first step is to render the shape layer in the "nested_comp" and in this step I suppose that After Effects doesn't see the Null yet, but it does take the value from the slider which doesn't match with my understanding of the render order.

Rick Gerard · Accepted Answer

Your logic is flawed. If you tie the scale of the nested comp to a null layer's expression controller then the first thing that happens in the nested comp is that it looks to the expression controller for instructions.

Rendering order is basically what you see in the timeline. There are exceptions. You can use masks and nested comps to change things, but an expression in a nested comp that looks at data from the main comp is going to be analyzed before anything else happens.

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