How to bake shape modification (zigzag, wiggle form and etc)?
Maybe the After Effects developers will give me a hint so that I understand how these functions affect the path shape and how I can access them in order to transform the shape's path and it looked like with a modifier, but without it
There is currently no way to convert these parametric shape modifiers to regular paths and that is that. If you need such stuff, you have to use the old way of creating it in Illustrator and importing it into AE or using copy & paste.
Thank you, I understand that there is no direct way. But maybe the developers will tell me how I can read the hidden data (and if I can get it). And already with him, perhaps it will become realizable
you can read mask vertices using the SDK, however, to alter a mask via the SDK, you must overwirte that mask data in it's final form. there's no way of passing AE a "work version" of the mask that differs from what's saved in the param value. you must change the param value to make AE use the changed version, thus destroying the original data.
"BAO mask avenger" tackled that issue in a unique way.
you can now manipulate masks using epxressions. so your plugin can write it's output mask data as an expressions instead of overwriting the original shape on param.
There is no one layer, one-click way but you can turn any layer with an alpha channel or some significant amount of contrast into a vector path using the Layer/Auto-trace menu. This will give you a vector path that you can turn into keyframes or you can attach nulls to the keyframes, or you can access the path with expressions. You can even turn each keyframe into a motion path. You can also convert shapes to vector paths so the data before a shape layer modifier was applied.
It would help us help you if we had some idea of what you are trying to accomplish. You can certainly extract vector path data from just about anything with transparency or significant detail. There are also countless ways you can use that data. We just need to know what you are trying to accomplish.
I noticed that this is just a limited workaround, but might help depending on your situation:
If you need to wiggle/oscilate around a given path in a way such that the result can be baked into a path again, one option is the Sine Wave expression of my (paid) extension iExpressions. Since the wiggled path is created with expressions, it can be baked into a path by converting the expression into keyframes.
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