Variables, Targets & Delivery
A variable is an apply-time slot: a {{name}} placeholder that gets its real value at the moment you apply, never before. Three words — a variable, a target, and delivery — describe the whole model, and this page defines them before anything else depends on them.
A variable is an apply-time slot
A variable is a {{name}} placeholder in your code for a tunable value — a radius, a color, a target layer. Its type isn't set by hand: it's derived from whatever target it's wired to. You don't declare "this is a number" or "this is a layer" — you wire the variable to something, and the type follows. Until a target establishes one, a variable's type is simply unresolved — no assumption, no warning, just a placeholder waiting on a wire.
A target is where the wire lands
A variable's target is where the wire lands at apply time. There are three kinds:
- A new control — a fresh AE Expression Control, built to the type your variable already resolves to, created when you apply.
- An existing AE property, reached through the pickwhip.
- Ask on apply — asked for at the moment you apply, never pre-set.
Delivery decides how a control gets built
When a variable's target is a new control, delivery decides how that control is actually built: as individual native AE Expression Controls, or bundled together into one pseudo effect. See Delivering Controls.
Quoted versus raw
A variable wired to a string target resolves as a quoted literal. A variable wired to a layer or property target is spliced into the code raw and unquoted — thisComp.layer("Ctrl"), not "thisComp.layer(\"Ctrl\")". That distinction is what lets a genuine AE reference keep working after resolution, instead of becoming an inert string that merely looks like one.
Applying a Library row resolves every variable to its authored default — the row list itself has no per-variable editors. Tune a default in The Author View and every future Audition or Apply from that row picks it up.