New to After Effects so bear with me, and back in the day I used to use Flash actionscript quite a bit so that way of thinking may not be viable in After Effects. But thought I'd ask anyhoo...
The situation I find myself is a layer with a clip (second layer) as a Luma Mask, ideally I'd like to reuse this animated mask (second layer) at set points in the composition without having to create loads of duplicate or split layers.
So the structure would kind of work like:
Playhead on main timeline reaches beginning of section - Script starts mask animation fade-in playing Playhead on main timeline reaches end of section - Script starts mask animation fade-out playing
When the next section is reached on the main timeline, a script resets the mask animation to the beginning and replays the above loop.
So in a nutshell - Is it possible to independently control a clip playhead (make it jump to frame 30 for example) or does a clip only play in linear fashion (within AE).
Many thanks for your time.
Regards, Meeesta
Short answer: No.
Long answer: No. After effects is all about producing linear output. At render time the playhead starts at the first frame and proceeds in a linear fashion towards the last frame, no loops, no jumps. You'll have to use precomps and duplicates.