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

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.

Size & Position

BBoxLeft
BBoxRight
BBoxTop
BBoxBottom
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.
BBoxMidX
BBoxMidY
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
Return the size of the object in pixels.
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.

Tags

Tags
Get all the tags of an instance as a string.
TagsCount
Get the amount of tags an instance has.
TagAt
Get The tag at a specific index.

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.
ZElevation
Return the current elevation on the Z axis for the instance relative to its layer. This is not affected by the layer's Z elevation.
TotalZElevation
Return the instance's Z elevation added to the layer's Z elevation, providing the total Z elevation the instance appears at.
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.

Template

TemplateName
The name of the template used to create this instance. Returns an empty string if no template was used.
Construct 3 Manual 2024-09-23