Expression basics

Many of the examples in this section are based on examples provided by Dan Ebberts. Dan Ebberts also has an excellent collection of example expressions and tutorials for learning how to work with expressions on his MotionScript website.

The AE Enhancers forum provides many examples and much information about expressions, as well as scripts and animation presets.

Chris and Trish Meyer provide a simple video overview of expressions on the ProVideo Coalition website.

Michael Coleman, product manager for After Effects, provides a video overview of expressions on the Adobe website that shows how to use expressions to easily create programmatic animation. This overview is especially good at comparing using expressions to ActionScript programming.

• About expressions
• Add, edit, and remove expressions
• Example: Use the expression language reference to write an expression
• Show expressions and the expression graph
• Writing expressions for source text
• Add comments to an expression
• Save and reuse expressions
• Expression Controls effects
• Convert an expression to keyframes
• The expression language
• Expression errors