Random wheel spin (wheel of fortune-esque)

Question

Hi,I am trying to essentially create a prize wheel that will rotate a random number of times in a set time frame yet will still ease to a stop no matter how fast it starts out.  I am fairly new to After Effects so I am not familiar with the random function or how I would properly apply it to the rotation.  To summarize, if my animation were 5 seconds long, I would want to randomize the rotation so that it spins somewhere between 10-15 times within that 5 seconds yet still properly eases to a stop (to simulate how an actual wheel would spin).  Thank you!

Mylenium · Answer

Much more complicated than you think. Nothing at all to do with just applying some random function to the rotation. The randomness would only be needed to initialize your other functions with a specific value, but for different results you still need to tie it to a slider that changes the seed of the randomization. Still, you don't know the outcome and would have to experiment a lot to determine "nice" results or else you might only end up having rotations that all are too close to the same value and in turn don't produce a distinctly different outcome. The rest would, depending on the degree of realism required, be convoluted valueAtTime() calculations combined with physical formulas for the spin momentum and decelleration rate or at least some simplistic linear approximations. All that being the case I suggest you simply use traditional keyframe animation. It takes three or four keyframes per spin only, after all, so nothing stops you from copy & pasting keyframes, duplicating layers and simply adjusting the timing as needed. No reason to do any of this with complex expressions.

Mylenium

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