Common expressions

The following expressions are common to several plugins.

Angle

Angle: The object's current angle, in degrees. 0 degrees is facing right and angles increment clockwise.

Appearance

ColorValue: A number representing the color property of the instance. This can be used with the Set color action to set an object's color to match another object.
Opacity: The object's current opacity (semitransparency), from 0 (transparent) to 100 (opaque).

Hierarchy

These expressions are available for plugins that support the scene graph feature, allowing objects to be connected together so they move, rotate and scale as if they were one large object.

ChildCount: Return the number of children currently attached to this object (with the Add child action) in the hierarchy. This is 0 if the object has no children.
AllChildCount: Return the number of children currently attached to this object (with the Add child action) in the hierarchy, including all descendants. This is 0 if the object has no children
ParentUID: The unique ID (UID) of this object's parent in the hierarchy. If this object has no parent, it returns -1.

Misc

AsJSON: Save the object state to a string of data in JSON format, and return it. This can be downloaded or otherwise stored, and later the state of the object restored using the Set from JSON action.
Count: The number of instances of the object type.
PickedCount: The number of instances meeting the event's conditions. For example, if the event has the condition "Mouse is over Sprite", Sprite.PickedCount will return the number of Sprite instances that the mouse is over.
ObjectTypeName: The name of the object type for the given object. For example Sprite.ObjectTypeName will return "Sprite". When used as a family expression, this returns the name of the actual object type, never the name of the family itself.
IID: Return the instance's index ID (IID). See instances.
UID: Return the instance's unique ID (UID). See instances.
Tags: Get all the current instance tags as a space-string.
TagsCount: Get the number of tags an instance has.
TagAt: Get the tag at a zero-based index.

Size & Position

BBoxLeft
BBoxRight
BBoxTop
BBoxBottom
BBoxBack
BBoxFront: Return the layout co-ordinates of the object's axis-aligned bounding box. This is the smallest unrotated box that completely encloses the object, taking in to account any rotation or stretching. Note that the bounding box is tracked in 3D for use with 3D features.
BBoxMidX
BBoxMidY
BBoxMidZ: Return the layout co-ordinates of the mid-point of the object's axis-aligned bounding box. This is not necessarily the same position as the object origin, such as if the origin is not exactly in the middle.
Width
Height
Depth: Return the size of the object in pixels. Note only 3D objects like 3D shape have a Depth expression, as 2D objects do not have a size on the Z axis.
ImagePointX(nameOrNumber)
ImagePointY(nameOrNumber)
ImagePointZ(nameOrNumber): Return the position of one of the object's image points from its currently displaying animation frame in layout co-ordinates. Either the image point's name or its number can be passed. Note that when using a number, 0 refers to the origin, so the first image point is number 1.
X
Y: Return the object's position in the layout, in pixels. The origin (0,0) is at the top-left of the layout and the Y axis increments downwards.
Z: Return the object's position on the Z axis for the instance relative to its layer. This is not affected by the layer's Z elevation.
TotalZ: Return the object's Z position added to the layer's Z elevation, providing the total Z position the instance appears at.

Time

dt: Return delta-time according to the object's own timescale. See Delta-time and framerate independence for more information.

Z Order

LayerName: The name of the layer the instance is currently on.
LayerNumber: The zero-based index of the layer the instance is currently on.
ZIndex: Get the zero-based index of the Z order of this instance within its current layer. 0 is the bottom instance, increasing up to the top instance.