Comp Expressions
Inherited rigs and comps you didn't build yourself have a recurring problem: somewhere in there, an expression is doing something, and you can't remember which property it's on. The Comp Expressions panel is the answer — a live, bounded list of expression-bearing properties found in the composition you're currently working in.
Opening the panel
Click Comp Expressions on the toolbar to open it. It lists the expression-bearing properties returned by the active-comp snapshot. A text-read pass processes at most 4,000 property paths and stops after three seconds; if either the comp snapshot or text pass is incomplete, the panel labels the list as partial and names the limit it reached.
Searching by name or by code
The panel is searchable two ways at once: by the property's own name, or by the actual text of the expression written on it. That second mode is the one worth remembering — you can find "the expression that references that null," even if you have no idea which property it lives on.
Jumping to a property
Double-clicking a row reveals that property in AE's timeline — the same reveal gesture the pin chip uses. See Reveal in Timeline for exactly what that does and the one-time permission it depends on.
Where the list comes from
Renaming a layer or adding an expression directly in After Effects schedules a fresh snapshot, so the list updates without a manual refresh. On unusually large or slow comps, the partial-results notice remains visible instead of presenting a bounded scan as complete.
These screenshots were captured in an earlier beta. Toolbar and Library layouts have since changed; the written instructions on this page describe v0.145.4. See A Tour of the Panel for the current controls.
Related
- Reveal in Timeline — what double-clicking a row actually does
- Pinning an Apply Target — the other surface that shares the reveal gesture
- The Dependency Map — a different, graph-shaped view of what an expression depends on