[Mike Clasby]

Short Answer, Slider and pickwhip.

Since your Frequency and Amplitude are equal (30,30), put a slider on your layer (Effect>Expression Control>Slider Control), then put on this expression:

wiggle(effect(“Slider Control”)(“Slider”),effect(“Slider Control”)(“Slider”))

You could have gotten there from your expression:

wiggle(30,30)

by hitting “e” to expose the slider, hitting “ee” to expose your original expression, wiggle (30,30), highlighting(select) one of the 30’s, then pickwhip to the slider, then doing the same for the other 30).

Setting a keyframe on the slider for 0, then 30 down the line will make the layer go from 0 to 30 wiggle-wise (not exactly ease, I’m still fiddling with that.)

[Mike Clasby]

It may be as simple as a checkbox.

In the Render Queue, Click on the Output Module, where it says in Blue : Lossless, Bases on Lossless, or QuickTime.
This opens the Output Module Settings Box.

Is the “Audio Output” checked?
Choose the flavor you want.

Choose the flavor you want.

Otherwise, is the little speaker turned off for the layer providing the audio? Hit the “.” (period) key on the numeric pad to hear the sound for the comp (it plays from wherever you are on the timeline.

[Mike Clasby]

It may be as simple as a checkbox.

In the Render Queue, Click on the Output Module, where it says in Blue : Lossless, Bases on Lossless, or QuickTime.
This opens the Output Module Settings Box.

Is the “Audio Output” checked?
Choose the flavor you want.

Choose the flavor you want.

Otherwise, is the little speaker turned off for the layer providing the audio? Hit the “.” (period) key on the numeric pad to hear the sound for the comp (it plays from wherever you are on the timeline.

[Mike Clasby]

Yeah, that weird. Is there only one layer in the comp, you video layer and the mask is on that? Twirl down to the mask, is it on “Add” ? If so you should be able to drop another video below it in the stack and you’ll see it all around the masked off guy.

In the render Queue, if you click on the “Output Module” – Photoshop 32bit, this open up the Module and under Channels should be “RGB + Alpha”, and Depth should be “Millions of Colors +”, the plus meaning you’ve got Alpha, but it sounds like your not getting your alpha around the mask in the original comp.

I dunno, it works fine for me here.

Your not applying the mask to a solid layer above the video, are you?

[Mike Clasby]

Dan has a nice Snow Falling Composition in his tutorial “Building a 3D Particle Generator”.
You can swap your Money Pic for his Snow psd and have 3D Money raining down in no time, all highly tweakable. Click on Dan Ebbert’s head(at top of page) then scroll down to, “Building a 3D Particle Generator” and download the project aep.

In AE close all the comps, except “Snow”.

I’d dup the comp and rename it “Money”, then close snow (unnecessary step really).

Anyway, in the old Snow or new Money comp, select all the snow layer except 1 and Delete.
That leaves 3 layers,

1 – snow_1.psd
2 – Null 1
3 – AE 5.x Default Camera

Import your Money Picture (psd?), note Dane’s particles are psd files that are 128×128 pixels , so if the size is right in his comp, make your money that size (or 128 wide) or adjust as needed.

Select the only snow layer left, snow_1.psd, and while holding down the Alt key, place your Money Pic ontop of the snow_1.psd layer. This should replace the snow layer with your money layer, keeping all the attributes of the old snow layer (all that god code Dan wrote).

Now Dup the layer (Ctrl D) as many times as you want Dollar Bills.

Note, this is 3D, so if you mask off your pilings, and make that layer and the background 3D, you can have the money raining down in front of and behind the Pilings.

I love Dan’s 3D particle Generator, it’s not Particular or Particle Illusion, but is great for small stuff, and is true 3D.

Note: You can control lots of things about Dan’s particles.

Select a Particle layer, hit “ee” to see the expressions, some things you can control are:

Point:
minimum particle life
maximum particle life

Position:
gravity
wind direction
emitter width

Orientation:

Z Rotation

Read Dan’s Tutorial “Building a 3D Particle Generator” he goes into detail.

Note 2: To get this into your project without bringing in all Dan’s Comps , you can reduce the project.

In the project window, Select the Comp with the money (Snow or Money).

File>Reduce Project.

Now save the project with a name like “RainingMoney”, then in your project Import the File RainingMoney.aep

[Mike Clasby]

Dan has a nice Snow Falling Composition in his tutorial “Building a 3D Particle Generator”.
You can swap your Money Pic for his Snow psd and have 3D Money raining down in no time, all highly tweakable. Click on Dan Ebbert’s head(at top of page) then scroll down to, “Building a 3D Particle Generator” and download the project aep.

In AE close all the comps, except “Snow”.

I’d dup the comp and rename it “Money”, then close snow (unnecessary step really).

Anyway, in the old Snow or new Money comp, select all the snow layer except 1 and Delete.
That leaves 3 layers,

1 – snow_1.psd
2 – Null 1
3 – AE 5.x Default Camera

Import your Money Picture (psd?), note Dane’s particles are psd files that are 128×128 pixels , so if the size is right in his comp, make your money that size (or 128 wide) or adjust as needed.

Select the only snow layer left, snow_1.psd, and while holding down the Alt key, place your Money Pic ontop of the snow_1.psd layer. This should replace the snow layer with your money layer, keeping all the attributes of the old snow layer (all that god code Dan wrote).

Now Dup the layer (Ctrl D) as many times as you want Dollar Bills.

Note, this is 3D, so if you mask off your pilings, and make that layer and the background 3D, you can have the money raining down in front of and behind the Pilings.

I love Dan’s 3D particle Generator, it’s not Particular or Particle Illusion, but is great for small stuff, and is true 3D.

Note: You can control lots of things about Dan’s particles.

Select a Particle layer, hit “ee” to see the expressions, some things you can control are:

Point:
minimum particle life
maximum particle life

Position:
gravity
wind direction
emitter width

Orientation:

Z Rotation

Read Dan’s Tutorial “Building a 3D Particle Generator” he goes into detail.

Note 2: To get this into your project without bringing in all Dan’s Comps , you can reduce the project.

In the project window, Select the Comp with the money (Snow or Money).

File>Reduce Project.

Now save the project with a name like “RainingMoney”, then in your project Import the File RainingMoney.aep

[Mike Clasby]

Composition>Save Frame As>File

will give you a Photoshop (psd) file with alpha all around the masked off guy.

In the render Queue, twirl down the “Output Module”, then from the drop down, “Post Render Action”, select “Import”, hit Render in the render Queue, and you’re good to go, the psd will be up in the project window begging to be used.

[Mike Clasby]

Andrew, this is a good reason to upgrade to AE7. Thanks.

[Mike Clasby]

Here’s the Dissolving Randomly part. This too is a slight modification (I switched the 100 and 0) from a Dan Ebberts Post, yes I know I’m only a Remora feeding on the scraps of the Great White Dan Shark. Its an expression to have a layer blink out at a random time between the start and end of the comp, unfortunately the only way I know to make this work is by splitting a layer (the Comp 1 layer in Comp 2) then replacing the top part of the split with a copy (adjusted for time) of the 100 vids-in-a-grid comp).

If you’re using the Big Methods (Comp 1 is 7200×4800 with 100 720×480 vids in a 10×10 grid, hey all these numbers are making my head spin), then you can make the 100 vids-in-a-grid Dissolve or blink out randomly this way:

In the Project Window, select Comp 1 and Dup it (Ctrl D), rename it (it’s probably Comp 3 now) to something like “Comp 1 Dissolve” (rename by selecting the comp in that window, then Enter, and type in the name).

Now in Comp 2 (the 720×480 one, the only layer being “Comp 1”), move to the point in the timeline where you want the layers to start dissolving, let’s say it’s at 2 seconds.

Open “Comp 1 Dissolve”, and go to 2 seconds, hit the letter “b” on the keyboard (we’re setting the Beginning of the Work Area), then Composition>Trim Comp to work area.
Now select the top layer (of the 100 layers), hit “t:” to reveal Opacity, Alt Click the Opacity Stopwatch, and paste in this expression:

seed_random(1,true);
t=random(0,this_comp.duration);
if (time >= t) {
0
}
else{
100
}

This expression tells the layer to blink off (100% Opacity else 0% opacity) at a random time from the start to the end of the comp.

Select the Opacity Property, and Edit>Copy Expression Only.
Now select all the other layers (in the grid), and Paste.
The layers should all be visible at the beginning of the comp. and all have blinked out (to 0% Opacity) at the end of the comp.
Like I said, the expression adjust to blink out the layers depending on the comp length, so:

How long do you want the dissolving of all 100 layers to take?

Let’s say 4 seconds. So Go to 4 seconds (still in Comp 1 Dissolve) and hit “n”, (this sets the end of the Work Area) and then:

Composition>Trim Comp to Work Area (Note: See warning below, it’s easy to shorten a comp, but a bit of a pain in the neck to lengthen it (unless I’m showing my ignorance, which I may be) so keep it on the long side, you can shorten it later.

Now, back in “Comp 2”, at 2 seconds, select the “Comp 1” layer, and Edit>Split Layer.
This splits the layer, the top one should be selected, and from the Project Window drag down the “Comp 1 Dissolve” Comp (while holding down the Alt key) onto the Top Comp 1 layer in Comp 2. This replaces that top part of the split layer with the Comp 1 Dissolve.

You should have what you want. Just build you text thing from here on.

If you want to adjust the time that it takes the layers to blink out, the go back and change the length of the “Comp 1 Dissolve” (either by setting the Work Area, and Trimming to Work Area, like we did before, or Composition>Composition Setting, then change the Duration in the bottom of the Composition Settings Box). Lengthening can be a pain because you need to drag the individual layers back to the right so they are the full length of the lengthened comp, I think there’s a handy shortcut here, but it eludes me. That’s why its better to have the Dissolve on the long side, then shorten until you’re happy.

Yikes.

[Mike Clasby]

Here’s the Dissolving Randomly part. This too is a slight modification (I switched the 100 and 0) from a Dan Ebberts Post, yes I know I’m only a Remora feeding on the scraps of the Great White Dan Shark. Its an expression to have a layer blink out at a random time between the start and end of the comp, unfortunately the only way I know to make this work is by splitting a layer (the Comp 1 layer in Comp 2) then replacing the top part of the split with a copy (adjusted for time) of the 100 vids-in-a-grid comp).

If you’re using the Big Methods (Comp 1 is 7200×4800 with 100 720×480 vids in a 10×10 grid, hey all these numbers are making my head spin), then you can make the 100 vids-in-a-grid Dissolve or blink out randomly this way:

In the Project Window, select Comp 1 and Dup it (Ctrl D), rename it (it’s probably Comp 3 now) to something like “Comp 1 Dissolve” (rename by selecting the comp in that window, then Enter, and type in the name).

Now in Comp 2 (the 720×480 one, the only layer being “Comp 1”), move to the point in the timeline where you want the layers to start dissolving, let’s say it’s at 2 seconds.

Open “Comp 1 Dissolve”, and go to 2 seconds, hit the letter “b” on the keyboard (we’re setting the Beginning of the Work Area), then Composition>Trim Comp to work area.
Now select the top layer (of the 100 layers), hit “t:” to reveal Opacity, Alt Click the Opacity Stopwatch, and paste in this expression:

seed_random(1,true);
t=random(0,this_comp.duration);
if (time >= t) {
0
}
else{
100
}

This expression tells the layer to blink off (100% Opacity else 0% opacity) at a random time from the start to the end of the comp.

Select the Opacity Property, and Edit>Copy Expression Only.
Now select all the other layers (in the grid), and Paste.
The layers should all be visible at the beginning of the comp. and all have blinked out (to 0% Opacity) at the end of the comp.
Like I said, the expression adjust to blink out the layers depending on the comp length, so:

How long do you want the dissolving of all 100 layers to take?

Let’s say 4 seconds. So Go to 4 seconds (still in Comp 1 Dissolve) and hit “n”, (this sets the end of the Work Area) and then:

Composition>Trim Comp to Work Area (Note: See warning below, it’s easy to shorten a comp, but a bit of a pain in the neck to lengthen it (unless I’m showing my ignorance, which I may be) so keep it on the long side, you can shorten it later.

Now, back in “Comp 2”, at 2 seconds, select the “Comp 1” layer, and Edit>Split Layer.
This splits the layer, the top one should be selected, and from the Project Window drag down the “Comp 1 Dissolve” Comp (while holding down the Alt key) onto the Top Comp 1 layer in Comp 2. This replaces that top part of the split layer with the Comp 1 Dissolve.

You should have what you want. Just build you text thing from here on.

If you want to adjust the time that it takes the layers to blink out, the go back and change the length of the “Comp 1 Dissolve” (either by setting the Work Area, and Trimming to Work Area, like we did before, or Composition>Composition Setting, then change the Duration in the bottom of the Composition Settings Box). Lengthening can be a pain because you need to drag the individual layers back to the right so they are the full length of the lengthened comp, I think there’s a handy shortcut here, but it eludes me. That’s why its better to have the Dissolve on the long side, then shorten until you’re happy.

Yikes.