Vybe FAQ

VYBE FAQ, TIPS, TRICKS, MISC OBSERVATIONS

Installation: To install Vybe (AE 2024 and later) as a dockable panel, place the Vybe.jsxbin file and the Vybe folder containing the .ffx files in After Effects/Scripts/ScriptUI Panels (MAC) or After Effects/Support Files/Scripts/ScriptUI Panels (WINDOWS). 

Known issue for Mac Users: As of launch, there is an issue that occurs occasionally on Macs running AE 2024 & 2025. Specifically, when re-applying Vybe to cleaned (or Command Z'd) shape layers, a crash might be induced due to a conflict that seems related to the Properties Panel.

 Adobe is aware and investigating the issue.

Temporary Solution: Turn off your properties panel:

AE 2024: Select a shape layer in the toolbar at the top of the UI, turn off the Auto-Open Panel checkbox and make sure the icon to the left is not highlighted. 

AE 2025: In the Windows menu, make sure Properties is not checked.

 

Troubleshooting:  If you're experiencing crashing or freezing, try the following:

 1) Empty your Cache (Edit>Purge> All Cache...) and restart.

2) If you can't open a project that has crashed, try dragging it into a clean project.

 

Presets:

1) These are meant to be a starting point, and every aspect can easily be adjusted. You can find references here.

2) Anything labled Mix has some sort of built-in variable and is intended for multi-layered comps

3) They almost never affect the Axis, Target or Trigger. On rare occasions, they do affect the Axis settings (Spin X, Y, Z). If one of those are selected, make sure to remember the Axis has changed and might need to be reset.

4) Anytime you see an Attack and Decay setting of Cut/Cut, it usually means it's optomised for seamless looping.

 

Docking: Vybe is a horizontal UI thats designed to live at the top of your workspace, below the toolbar. If you launch it from our free LaunchBox utility, then it won't be able to be docked...it can only be docked from the Windows dropdown.

Speed Controls

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Layers appear to be jump cutting: This could be for several reasons:

1) That's a natural part of the wavefom you're using in your build (Square, Saw & Chaos' loop point). 

2) The Life setting isn't in sync with the Freq so the cycle is interrupted before it completes.

3) The Trigger's Min/Max/Offset setting is shorter than the Life setting. For example, If you're Life is 1 sec, the Repeat, Random, and Marker positions need to be longer than 30 frames.

 

Transitions: 

Important: Transitions shouldn't be set to one of the repetitive Trigger modes (Loop, Repeat, Random or Markers) or it won't work as expected.

Cuts: These use Square Waves, which by nature, cut from go from start, to one extreme then cut to another, then back to the start. For these transitions we only use the portion of the wave we need to make the cuts happen.

Cut On works great in conjunction with Offset and Random Offset. The UI is set up to accommodate for cuts as long as 30 seconds into a comp. If you need more than that, set the Life (seconds) and the Delay (-frames) for the longest time the cut needs to occur in the comp.

Slide & Turn: These use no waves (None) and their Influence are set to ther extremes.

 

Turn Off a unique preset. It has a default Delay of -16, which means if the Life of the wave is 1 sec, the layer will be at 90 degrees at the point where it is preset to transition off (tho that can be adjusted as required). It requires a specific workflow in order to work as expected. 1) With Trigger set to Once or Offset, Cut Off needs to be applied to the comp at the time you'd like the layers to cut off (eg when the layers are turned 90 degrees). 2) If Markers are used, set the Cut Off Delay to however many frames from the marker are desired for the layers to cut off. 

Time: The Vybe UI uses several diffrent units of time-related measurements:

1) Frequency is measured in oscillations per second. 

2) Life is measured in seconds

3) Trigger: Repeat, Random, Offset & Random Offset  Min/Max/Offset & Delay are measured in frames.

4) CTI: The following Triggers work on the Current Time Indicator: Current Time, Offset and Randomized Time.

5) Continuous, Repeat and Random Time all are triggered at 0. If you need to trigger them at a different point in the comp, use the Delay feature, or go into the Effects Controls and change them manually.

Strength Settings:

Position presets use the width (or height, whichever is larger) of the comp as their reference:

Micro: 2%, Mini: 10%, Low: 25%, Med: 50%, High: 100%, Eleven (if you’ve seen Spinal Tap you know): 200%, Atomic: 400% 

If you'd like settings between any of these, you can adjust the width of your comp pre-build then return it to the original settings after.

Or - adjust it manually in the effects controls.

 

Rotation presets are measured in degrees of rotation: 

 Micro: 14.4°, Mini: 72°, Low: 180°, Med: 360°, High: 720°, Eleven: 1440°, Atomic: 2880° 

 

Randomness: This is a wiggle effect control at the bottom of each Vybe expression placed on a layer. Its defaulted to a strength of 0, so It must be set manually after the build.  You can cut and paste settings from one layer to all layers.

 

Chaos Waves don't loop. If you're going to be using them, we suggest changing the Life setting to at least as long as the comp length.

 

Layer isin't moving: 

Check the Life setting (or the Envelope settings in the Effects Controls). If a long Life setting is combined with an ease attack or decay, the layer might not respond for a while. 

Make sure not to delete Vybe effects controls. Rather turn them off instead...otherwise it might disable other Vybes on the same layer.

Precomping: Precomping Vybe'd layers might come in handy in a few differnt ways:

1) You want to clean specifc layers but want to keep others. Precomp the ones you want to keep.

2) If you have a Rotation Vybe that uses an anchorpoint centered in the layer, but want to apply a new Vybe using the anchor located at the centerpoint of the comp. Use Scene Maker in Monkeytools (or other 3rd party scripts) and Anchor Yanker in Vybe to help do that.

  

Understanding Blink & Cuts: Since Vybe does not operate on Opacity, the workaround uses Square waves to cut from its original position to a second one offscreen. 

Blink uses (Trigger + Life) to calculate the ratio of offscreen vs onscreen. 

For example, if the Trigger is set to Repeat, and the Min time is 45, & Life is 1 sec (30 frames), the layer will be offscreen (invisible) for 30 frames and visible for 15 frames - totalling 45 frames.

Another example: Min: 6 + Life: .1 (3 frames)  = Offscreen 3 frames, Onscreen 3 frames.

Cut On is even more of a hack. It uses the second half of a Square wave so it starts offscreen and cuts back to its original position. As this technique illustrates, partial waves (eg Freq .5 / Life 1) can be useful if you want the motion to ocillate in one direction.  Try using this in conjunction with Offset + Turn On or Slide On.

Marker Layers:  Its best to put the Marker Layer at the top of the layer stack, and to make sure your marker layer has a unique name since the expressions are referencing the marker layer name. However, you can use that to your advantage if you want to introduce a new marker layer without rebuilding, by putting the new one on top of the layer stack and renaming it with the original Marker Layer name.

Marker Time effects have a great feature that allows you to not only start at a specific marker, but also skip any number of markers, so if you can have actions occur at different beats.

 

Anchor Yanker: Anchorpoint location make a huge difference in how an animation rotates. Anchor Yanchor is a tool that we've included that set up to reposition the Anchor Point in world coordinates. That means that if the layer’s Scale is other than 100%, the resulting Anchor Point will likely be different than you expect, but the corresponding Position offset should come out as expected. At 100% Scale, the Anchor Point and Position offsets should both match the requested amount.

Cleaning: Cleaning a comp will delete all the Vybe expressions in the comp.

1) Locking a layer will not prevent a layer from being cleaned. 

2)Turning off the FX checkbox won't work either.

3) Deleting the effects controls will succeed in making the Vybe inactive, but the expressions and the Comment will remain so it won't be cleaned. It will also disable all the other Vybes on that layer.

4) Disabling the Effect Control checkbox is a good way to turn off specific effects.

 

Layer Order: Since there's no option for layer order - Vybe will always trigger the top layer first when Once, or Offset are selected. By selecting the layers in reverse order, then cutting, deleting and pasting them back into the comp, you can reverse the order Vybe triggers the layers. This can be done multiple times during the build if needed, but make sure to unshy, unlock and include the adjustment layers when cutting and pasting. 

Interactions: The right side of the UI are extremely interactive. For example, Attack & Decay have a significant influence on Strength. The stronger the ease, the lower the Strength. Another example is Life effecting Attack & Decay. The longer the Life, the slower the Attack and Decay. eg if you have a Life of 100 and an Ease In selected, the layer will appear to just sit there for a while before it starts to move. In fact its easiing in, but incredibly slowly.

What is Duty Cycle: This term applies to how a square wave is divided up between the top and bottom of the wave.

Path + Nulls + Vybe:  Applying Vybe to nulls that control points on a path is very easy. Simply create the nulls using AE's native "Create Nulls from Paths" script (in the Windows menu), select the path, then click "Points Follow Nulls". Once thats done, apply Vybe to the nulls and you're done.

 

Directional Motion: As discussed, waveforms tend to start and end in the same place. However there are workarounds that allows for directional motion - eg the Preset Transitions section. Using the combination of Wave: None + Attack: None + Decay (any) + Influence 0/100, results in diectional motion that resolves in the original positon. If the same set up were used, but changed to:  Attack (any) + Decay: None + Influence 100/0, the results would be the opposted.

Mix Formulas: The following is a list of what goes into each random mix:

STRENGTH:

Random = Micro, Mini, Low, Med, High, Eleven

LowMix = Micro, Mini

Med Mix = Low, Med

High Mix = High, Eleven

WAVE:

 Random = Sine, Triangle, Saw, Complex, Chaos

Smooth = Sine, Triangle, Complex

Quirky = Chaos, Square, Complex

 

FREQUENCY:

Random = .05, .1, .25, .5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8

Slo Mix = .01, .05, .1

Low Mix = .125, .25 .5, 1

Med Mix = 2, 3, 4

High Mix = 6, 8, 10

 

ATTACK:

Random = Ease In, Ease Out, Ease I/O, Hi Ease In, Hi Ease Out, Hi Ease I/O, Inertia, Anticipate

Ease Mix = Ease In, Ease Out, Ease I/O, Hi Ease In, Hi Ease Out, Hi Ease I/O

Back Mix = Inertia, Bouncy, Anticipate

Linear Mix = Cut, Linear

 

DECAY:

Random = Ease In, Ease Out, Ease I/O, Hi Ease In, Hi Ease Out, Hi Ease I/O, Inertia, Anticipate

Ease Mix = Ease In, Ease Out, Ease I/O, Hi Ease In, Hi Ease Out, Hi Ease I/O

Back Mix = Inertia, Bouncy, Anticipate

Linear Mix = Cut, Linear

 

INFLUENCE:

Random = 30/70, 40/60, 50/50, 60/40, 70/30

Whats with the strange Axis deopdown labels? Since Vybe shares this dropdown betwen Position and Orientation/Rotation expressions, this was the best way we could make it as understandable as possible.

Why no Anchor, Scale or Opacity Vybes? Stay tuned. In the meantime, you can always parent any transform or effect control to a Position or Orientation Vybe axis and then adust the scale in the expression.

 

 

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