aescripts + aeplugins

Hey Trevor glad you are enjoying Trigger! You are 100% correct this whole process relies on timeremapping trickery. So I like to think of it as I am capturing an animation event (any animation that occurs between two markers). When I flow out a complex motion prototype I usually try to create my animation events in the same sequence as I want to use them in the prototyping flow. Inside my nested precomp I usually leave 20-30 seconds in between each interaction just in case later I want to add something in between and create a new trigger to add to my flow. You are absolutely correct in the sense that that animations can be swapped or separated but not overlapped without duplicating your nested precomp layer because the timeremapping expression only knows to play until it reaches the next marker inside the comp. Hope this helps.

Casey. Thank you. I have a complex project management app to animate (prototype) and now I'm starting to understand the nuances and power of Trigger, it's a TRUE lifesaver.
Question: Am I correct in understanding that the creation of CUSTOM triggers inside a nested pre comp requires that multiple animations don't overlap?
Example: 
I have two shape layers (in a nested pre comp, of course), each separately taking 1min to move right to left 400px.
I set a custom trigger from the first position keyframe of shape 1 and call the Trigger "Move 1"I set a custom trigger from the first position keyframe of shape 2 and call the Trigger "Move 2"Return to the parent comp and there are my two triggers, working perfectlyUNTIL, I drag "Move 2" to a time during "Move 1", in which case the move "Move 1" resets and starts over.I'm assuming because you're using time remapping on parent the pre comp to allow this great functionality, Trigger won't allow simultaneous motion to be drawn from within the one pre comp?. If "Move 1" takes 1min to execute, then "Move 2" simply can't begin until after "Move 1" has completed. They can be swapped and separated etc, but not overlapped. Right?
The workaround is simply to create one pre comp for each of the moves. Hardly an inconvenience and allows TOTAL control, including overlapping, but just wanted to check and (if I'm right) might be worth letting folks know, so they don't have to drink three beers like I did before the answer became apparent :-)
Now, hopefully, I'm wrong and I'm just missing a step, and I can have all my shapes in one pre comp, but please let me know.
thanks again

Hey Trevor, apologies for the late response. You are absolutely correct in thinking that you want to build your precomp animations in roughly the same sequence or order that you want to use them in your master comp to avoid the timeremapping "jump" that you are eluding to. I usually separate all animation events in my precomp by a least 30 seconds. This helps you because later down the road you may decide that you want to add more interactions or animation triggers in between others that you have already created, this gives you room to scale up and add more complexity to your animation flows without having to move a bunch of layers around in your precomp. To elaborate further on your earlier question it's important to encase any animation between two markers because when an animation is triggered from the nested precomp layer (the global comp with all the animations inside it) the script will use timeremapping to play from the layer marker called until it reaches the next layer marker or the end of the comp if no other marker is found. If you have multiple animations between two layer markers both animations will play when you call that animation.  I make every interaction its own encased animation event, say for example I have a menu coming in from the left then 10 seconds later it animates back to its original position, I would add one marker for the In Transtion at the beginning and one marker for Leave Transition, depending on if you have more animations following the Leave Transition, I usually use a marker named "hold" after the leave animation. This will keep the animation from continuing to play other unwanted animation that occur after the leave transition. Does that make sense? 

When you say it's "important to encase any single animation between two layer markers" can you expand on that for me please, maybe with a quick example? I've been running into problems organizing the animations in my pre comps in such a way that the triggers behave correctly in the parent comp.

For instance; a simple animated color change that's supposed to occur simultaneously with a position change for a shape layer. The shape layer can be set to change from green to blue as it moves 500px up, that's trigger 1. Then blue to green as it moves 500 pixels down = trigger 2. But moving Trigger 2 before trigger 1 in the parent comp causes an inevitable sudden position jump. So it's important, as far as I can see, that pre comps are constructed in such a way that all animations actually happen in the order they will eventually be used in the parent comp. The examples you show in the tutorial all use animations that either start from a shared point, or that start off-screen. 

If I'm correct in the above thinking, it's an important point that I've had to discover the hard way and causes precomps to have to be built a certain way.

If I'm wrong, please tell me how I should be doing it :-)