create a number counter?

[RigTheory]

Hello again Everyone!
I'm trying to create a number counter that can go into 5 digits for a long animation project. I would like to break the project up into different shots and use a counter that can start at different numbers. For example, the number in shot 11 would start with a value of 2200. Where, in shot 30 the number counter's value might start at 11280.

I downloaded and inspected SlowTiger's number counter, but I couldn't understand the first thing about how it worked.
Can anyone point me to a tutorial or step by step of how to do this?


-L

[slowtiger]

I did a number counter?

Oh, I start to remember, slowly, those were dark times ... give me a moment to dig that up again.

[slowtiger]

Found it!

It's a quite simple setup.
Zahl1 = the one's. Zahl2 = the 10's. Zahl3 = the 100's. All are switch layers containing the same set of numbers 0 - 9.

The 1's switch every frame and loop after 9 back to 0.
The 10's switch every 10th frame and loop after 9 back to 0. This starts at frame 10.
The 100's switch every 100th frame and loop after 9 back to 0. This starts at frame 100.

And so on, you could extend this to any number of digits - in theory. But I found an interval greater than 100 being very unpractical in creation. Maybe you could create these with "Rescale Keyframes", but I suspect you will have to try more than once to get it work exactly to the frame.

(Thisshould be a feature request: can we have a frame/SMPTE counter implemented in Moho? It should be possible to start at any value a user enters. Separate layer, so it can be rendered/hidden as anything else. Would be very useful for larger teams for review of animation.)

[Greenlaw]

When I need a frame counter in Moho, I just import a pre-rendered image sequence that I created using Ae and use it as an overlay. I use this same image sequence in other animation programs too so it's been really handy.

But most of the time, the scene animatic I import for reference already has the frame counter burned in so it hasn't been necessary.

That said, yeah I agree, an adjustable native frame/timecode overlay should be standard.

[slowtiger]

Right, I remember doing this as well ... once I had an animated GIF for that purpose.

[synthsin75]

Try this:
https://drive.google.com/uc?export=down ... nxVEaGlrXO

It's a menu script to create a note layer as either a frame or SMPTE counter. If you run it again on an existing counter layer, you can change which format it displays. Otherwise, it creates a new counter layer.

[RigTheory]

Happy New Year everyone!
Thank you greatly for the replies. I will share my results