Re: "index" equivalent for parent comps?

An expression can't determine the parent comp of the comp the expression resides in. The reason has to do with the fact that a sub comp can be used in many "parent comps" and since the same instance of the sub comp is used in each parent comp, its behavior can't be different depending on attributes of the parent comp.

An expression can, however, access any comp by name. So I think the best you can do is duplicate your character comp and give it a name with a suffix that will match the suffix of the corresponding scene comp. For example, the expressions in character comp "Mickey 2" would be smart enough to look for parent comp "Scene 2".

Then your expressions would start out with something like this:

myScene = thisComp.name.split(" ")[thisComp.name.split.length-1];
myParentComp = comp("Scene " + myScene);

That way, at least you shouldn't have to go in and edit all the comp names in the expressions, because they would be constructed on the fly.


Dan