After effects position gleich null ebene expression

After-Effects offers some great functions to blend between two values. The main two are:

What's great about those functions is that they offer very extensive functionality for advanced users, but also give you the option to keep things simple. Let's start with simple :)

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The Basics

To blend between 2 items, we need three things:
1. To specify how much we want to blend
2. The first item
3. The second item

Comfortably enough, linear and ease expect you to give them exactly that.

Let's have a look at some examples:

Blend between two numbers

Let's try to interpolate between two numbers. Apply this expression to a Rotation property.

linear(0.5, 200, 400) // Result: 300

We are asking linear() to give us the number that is exactly halfway (0.5) between 200, and 400. You guessed it, the result is 300!

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Using a Slider as the amount

Because t expects a number between 0 and 1, we can easily use a slider to control it.
We're gonna add a slider to our layer by going to Effect -> Expression Controls -> Slider Control.
Now, let's change our Rotation expression a little bit

var slider = // pickwhip to your slider
linear(slider * 0.01, 200, 400);

Now we can use our slider to blend between 200 and 400:

You might have noticed that we are multiplying the slider value by 0.01. Now, why is that?
Well, linear and ease expect a number between 0 and 1 as the amount, and our slider can easily go beyond this range.
Multiplying the slider value by 0.01 lets us change the slider more comfortably between 0 and 100, instead of 0 and 1.

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Blend between two points

linear and ease are powerful, as they can blend between arrays of numbers.
Let's apply the following expression to a Position property:

linear(0.5, [0,0], [500,500]); // Result: [250,250]

We are asking linear() to give us back a point that is halfway between [0,0] and [500,500]. The result is [250,250].
What happens if you add two Null Objects (layer -> new -> Null Object) and set pointA and pointB to their positions?

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We can now move each of our nulls around in space, and our layer will stay directly in-between them.
We can also change the t value from 0.5 to any number between 0 and 1 to place our layer in a different spot in-between our nulls. Cool!

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Blend Between Colors

linear and ease work on multi-dimensional arrays, which means we can interpolate between colors!

var slider = // pickwhip to your slider
var red = [1,0,0,0];
var blue = [0,0,1,0];
linear(slider * 0.01,red,blue)

(Don't forget to Pickwhip to your slider like in the slider example above).
Now we quickly created a slider that lets us blend between red and blue.

What's cool about these kinds of rigs is that we converted a number (0 - 100) to a color ([x,x,x,x]).
What other numbers do you know? Is "time" a number? How about a Rotation value? Can you make a layer change its color based on its Rotation? How cool would that be?

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Remapping the range (advanced)

linear() is very powerful right out of the box, but it also has some hidden superpowers.
To find out about it, let's start with a problem.
Let's say we want to use time itself as the t value. Apply this expression to a Rotation property:

It works, but it works only when the current time is somewhere between 0 and 1. Then, we have 9 seconds of complete and utter nothingness.
We know that linear() expects a t value between 0 and 1, like a percentage almost. But what if we could change that?
What if we wanted our animation to be driven by time but between a different range, something like 3 and 8 seconds.

We can do it like so:

linear(t, rangeA, rangeB, itemA, itemB)

As it turns out, by squeezing two additional values in-between t and our items, we can define a range in which t will perform in.

Now if we apply the following expression to our Rotation property:

linear(time, 3, 8, 0, 360)

Our transition between 0 and 360 degrees will occur as t progresses between 3 and 8 seconds. How cool is that?

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linear() vs ease()

linear() lets you blend between two items an amount specified by the t value.
With ease() the same concepts apply, but t is modified behind the scenes to smoothly interpolate between 0 and 1. If that's not clear, let's compare the two:

linear(time, 0, 10, 0, 360);
ease(time, 0, 10, 0, 360);

linear result:

ease result:

Comparing the two, it's easy to see the difference. ease is biased and blends using a secret curve to simulate an easing effect.