Brand new user question - date/time generator

Hi all

Firstly I apologise if this is the wrong place for this type of question - please be kind, I’m just starting out here and mean no harm!

I’m an After Effects designer (for way longer than I care to admit!) and I’m am just starting out using Vuo - it’s a completely different world and something I’m super excited to explore - but it’s also quite overwhelming. I have a very quick question about something I’m trying to achieve and I wondered if someone could help by letting me know if it’s possible or not. I want to create a simple timer that displays the years, months, days, hours, minutes, seconds since a set moment in time. A good example is the mission elapsed time on this page:

I have been experimenting with the Make Relative Date-Time node and created something sort of close to what I want - my composition is attached. I have two questions:

  • Is it possible to create a set point in time that the date works from (rather than the values I’ve set in the node) so that’s always counting from then regardless of when the comp is open/used (like the Voyager mission timer)?

  • Is it possible format the output so that the words are removed (year, month etc) and replaced with a ‘:’ for example?

I appreciate these may be very basic questions. I promise I am working through tutorials as well and planning to put in the learning hours myself (and not just jump straight into forums to ask for help) - I just have a very time specific need to test something like this as soon as possible, so any initial guidance would be really appreciated.

Thanks

James

date_time_01.vuo (2.21 KB)

Hi and welcome to Vuo ;)

By searching the node library for “date” or “time”, I’ve found the Substract Date-Time node. Guess that is the one to use.
Joined are 3 test compositions. This subtract node counts 30 days in a month, therefore the 8 months and 22 days since 1 January 2020.

Making a simple composition that does a 00:00:00 is quite simple, see joined composition 1.
Only need to add several Format Number nodes to force minimum 2 digits, otherwise month 1 retrieves as “1” instead of “01” (Vuo team : Format date-time could also format relative date-times ? Or better, what about an input similar to format-date time on the fetch date-time nodes, to remove the need to use format number for each channel ?).


Making a composition that centers smaller YRS, MONTHS, DAYS etc below the digits is quite trickier I find. More nodes needed, although it’s very plausible there are easier methods than mine, but came up with this one.

  • PS 1 : Use a monospace font if you don’t want the centered layers to move too much (since each digit otherwise has its width, centering changes).
  • PS 2 : There is a Vuo bug to be solved, not sure it happens for you, but does for me, where every 3 times I open the font window to select a font Vuo crashes. You can use a Make Font node to avoid opening the font window.
  • PS 3 : If you still see some text moving with monospaced fonts, there is a Vuo bug also where in some cases Text layers move when updated.  

Simple - 1.vuo (8.98 KB)

Simple - 2.vuo (15.7 KB)

Complex.vuo (21 KB)

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Hey! Apologies for the slow reply (been away). Thanks so much for this - really really helpful. I’ll have a proper look later this afternoon when I get a spare moment.
Much appreciated.

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There is a Vuo bug to be solved, not sure it happens for you, but does for me, where every 3 times I open the font window to select a font Vuo crashes.

Fixed in Vuo 2.2.0.

Cool ! Can’t wait to play with 2.2.0, Some cool little additions !
Regarding that font panel bug, @cwilms-loyalist was the first to report it, so credit to him ;)

Vuo 2.0.2 crashed while using the Font Input Editor

Chris was the first to report it, so credit to him

Oh thanks! We’ve updated the release notes with proper credit.

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