Participant

Answered

Separate Dimensions greyed out

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
June 21, 2021
6 replies
24190 views

There is something wrong in this position graph but i can't enable Separate Dimensions to edit it. Whats going on?

Error or problem

Correct answer mrwitte

On some stuff you simply can't Separate Dimensions and you're just out of luck. I'm currently experiencing that on the Position values of Contents on Shape Layers. I get around this by doing the following:

Set up two Slider effects on your layer, one called POS X and the other called POS Y

ALT+LeftClick on the Position value of the item you wish you could Separate Dimensions on, and enter the Expression below:

x = [pickwhip value to Slider POS X];

y = [pickwhip value to Slider POS Y];

[x,y]

Animate/keyframe the values of the two sliders instead of the Position value

H

hammad34300010c7rd

Participant

You have to right click on layer name and see if "3D layer" option is checked.
You can only see separate dimensions active if this option is checked.

mrwitteCorrect answer

Participating Frequently

On some stuff you simply can't Separate Dimensions and you're just out of luck. I'm currently experiencing that on the Position values of Contents on Shape Layers. I get around this by doing the following:

Set up two Slider effects on your layer, one called POS X and the other called POS Y

ALT+LeftClick on the Position value of the item you wish you could Separate Dimensions on, and enter the Expression below:

x = [pickwhip value to Slider POS X];

y = [pickwhip value to Slider POS Y];

[x,y]

Animate/keyframe the values of the two sliders instead of the Position value

R

Rick Gerard

Community Expert

Separating dimensions wipes out the ability to use the Composition panel to edit a motion path. The bezier handles disappear. Almost all motion arrays benefit from the ability to edit a motion path with the pen tools. In most cases, it is incredibly difficult to accurately control any path by animating separate dimensions. On the rare occasion that you need to separate dimensions to control the timing of specific paths at specific times, expressions can easily solve problems. I would be surprised if I have used Separate Dimensions more than twice in the last year. Those compositions would have been some kind of infographic involving attaching something to an animated graph.

CLWill

Inspiring

Another way to solve this is to create a null object, and tie the position property of the effect to the position of the null object (via pick whip). You can then animate the null, with separate dimensions, full bezier handles and all, and get the same impact.

A

aaronkitzocreed

Participant

how?

CLWill

Inspiring

I'm trying that, and I don't see how I can pick whip the "x" coordinate of my shape (not the layer - the shape witihin the layer) to an effect slider within a separate null object layer, and I'm having the same problem, which is that I can't separate out the "x" and "y" positions in order to pick whip each individual property to its own slider. If that were the case, I could just animate each without the need for the null object to begin with.

On the null object, select "separate dimensions" and there you go.

Szalam

Community Expert

For the record, you can pretty easily get separated dimensions by applying three expression effects sliders to a layer and then tying the three position properties to those sliders.

A

aaronkitzocreed

Participant

That's nice. care to share more?

S

Shane5E25Author

Participant

Alright, i copied the keyframes from the Transform effect and moved it into the actual position keyframes of the clip. Fixed, Thank you!

A

Ali Jaber

Community Expert

AFAIK, you can only separate dimensions of the property "position" of the layer, you can't do that for the parameters of effects, even the "Position" parameter of the "Transform" effect