[Mike Clasby]

I’d give CC Sphere a try. Just put you footage in the top half of a comp, with nothing in the bottom. Apply CC Sphere to that precomp layer and you have a hemisphere. Or just mask off the top or bottom half of the layer, and apply CC Sphere. To look right, the footage for a sphere needs to be twice as wide as tall, 2:1 ratio.

Andrew has a setup for making CC Sphere respond to AE’s 3D Camera, done with Dan Ebbert’s lookAt expressions methinks, here:

https://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials.html?id=19

I’m not sure about adding the other stuff, but you can add many layers with CC Sphere on top of each other. Andrew does that to build an atmosphere (clouds) around Earth in the previous tut:

https://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials.html?id=13

[Mike Clasby]

That’s a great tut/demo, I’d seen before but lost the reference. Thanks.

[Mike Clasby]

Ok, a real expression guy should be able to do this, not me, but here’s an easy solution. Put this expression on a New Null layer’s Position:

holdTime = 1.0; //time to hold each position (seconds)
minVal = [0.1*thisComp.width, 0.1*thisComp.height];
maxVal = [0.9*thisComp.width, 0.9*thisComp.height];

seed = Math.floor(time/holdTime);
seedRandom(seed,true);
random(minVal,maxVal)

That will make the Null randomly assume a position within the screen, holding for 1 sec. Change holdTime, minVal, maxVal as needed.

Now add your real layer, and parent it to the Null (Null is Parent). Add your wiggle expression to the real layer.

The Random Hold part is from Dan, here:

https://www.motionscript.com/mastering-expressions/random-1.html

When I tried to add wiggle into Dan’s expression, it jumped down and right, offscreen, so the Null was the solution for me.

[Mike Clasby]

Gosh…

[Mike Clasby]

A slider lets you change a variable over time.

If you put an expression on Opacity (Alt Click the Opacity Stopwatch).

90

You get an opacity of 90 for that layer.

You could write it with a variable so you can see what you’re changing, like this:

op = 90;
op

Change the 90 and you change the expression and opacity.

But if you want to change the 90 over time, a slider is good. So Add a slider to the layer (Effect>Expression Controls>Slider Control), then in your earlier expression, highlight (select) the 90 and pickwhip (looks like an *, middle of those three little boxes) to the slider, to get:

op = effect(“Slider Control”)(“Slider”);
op

Now if you keyframe the slider over time, the slider will control the variable “op” and the opacity over time.

It’s really handy when you want to control several layer with the same expression. Add a slider to a Null, and this time lets name the Slider (double click it and rename) “Master Opacity”, from our original layer, pickwhip to that slider to get;

op = thisComp.layer(“Null 1”).effect(“Master Opacity”)(“Slider”);
op

Now if you wanted to apply that to many layers, highlight the expression (in original layer), and Edit>Copy Expression Only, then select as many other layers as you want, and Paste.

The slider “Master Opacity” in the Null will control all the layers’ opacity that have that expression.

Note: You can change the values on the Slider by putting your cursor over the value (on the slider) Right Clicking and Edit Value, then choose a new Min and Max between -1,000,000 and +1,000,000.
It’s often handy to change the values when you working with small numbers like between 0 and 1 , make 0 the min and 1 the max.

Sliders can be used for a lot more, anytime you want to change a variable, like here for turning Wiggle, On and Off (set the Frequency to 0):

freq = 5;
amp = 100;
wiggle (freq, amp)

But if you tied it to a slider, and set keyframes you can have it wiggle at a frequency of 5, then drop that to zero with slider keyframes. The slider expression for the above is this (Again with pickwhipping) and I named the Slider “freq” also:

freq = effect(“freq”)(“Slider”);
amp = 100;
wiggle (freq, amp)

It can be used in very interesting ways. Dan uses a slider here, Building the World’s Greatest Cameraman , to control what layer a camera looks at:

https://library.creativecow.net/articles/ebberts_dan/expression_cont.php

In the comp, “pan, tilt, focus, zoom”, the Point of Interest, of Camera 1, is controlled by the Slider in Null 1. Pretty nifty.

Aharon, a very clear a thorough, has a few tuts on expression controls, click his head on the main page and scroll down to:

Expression Controls #1, #2 and #3.

[Mike Clasby]

This seems to do what you want, on The same stopwatch you used, I’m assuming Upper Left Corner Pin:

xOffset = -150;
yOffset = -100;
value + [xOffset, yOffset]

[Mike Clasby]

So if you want to leave for lunch and render 2 versions of “render me” each with a different sub comp “movie”, you need to Duplicate “render me” and “movie” (in the project window).

Fix “movie” and “movie 1” so they are different. You can use the eyeballs on/off, or sub in footage, with Alt Dragging onto selected layers, whatever you need to get the difference you want.

Then open both, “render me” and “render me 2”.

Have “movie” in “render me”. Ctrl M and choose that template you made earlier.

Have “movie 1” in “render me 1”. Ctrl M, again, will give you a second item in the Render Que, use the same template. Both will be checked and run, when you click “Render” and enjoy your lunch.

When you come back you’ll have two different versions of “render me”.

Is that what you want?

If you really want to render out each QuickTime from “movie”, make a comp for each variation, render them, then sub them into separate instances of “render me” , then line all those up in the Render Queue to render while you’re gone. This way it’s a two step process but there’s no reason you can’t render out many variations each time.

[Mike Clasby]

So is this how you do it?

New Comp (Ctrl N)

Add your Audio layer

Add a new Solid (Ctrl Y) it’s named “Black Solid 1”

Add an Oval mask (becomes Mask 1 on Solid Layer). I used the Elliptical Mask Tool.

To the Solid add Render>Audio Waveform (or Audio Spectrum)

In Audio Waveform:
Audio Layer:Choose the Audio Layer you added earlier
Path: Mask 1 (the Oval mask)

Now select “Solid Layer 1” and “I” puts you at the inpoint of the layer, then Layer>Auto Trace (Time Span:Work Area, Tolerance and Threshold at 1), click OK. (It’s important to choose Work Area, not Current Frame as that will only give you 1 frame)

You should see a new layer created above, name “Auto-traced Black Solid 1”.

Select “Auto-traced Black Solid 1”. “M” reveals the masks. There will be at least 2, maybe more.

Choose the outside mask (look at the colors), it should be mask 1. If you have a plethora of mask, your jumping outside the frame (see earlier post and precomp in a larger comp to keep the lines inside the frame).

So you should see a white shape the spectrum, changing with the music. That layer, “Auto-traced Black Solid 1” is really a white solid, with the mask on it that is the shape of the outside of the Audio Waveform.

To that layer named, “Auto-traced Black Solid 1”, add Fill, choose your fill color.

This works for me.

It sounds like Auto Trace is not seeing the Audio Waveform or Audio Spectrum line generated by the plugins, but it does for me. And those animated auto-traced masks are in the layer named “Auto-traced Black Solid 1”.

All I can say is try precomposing them, then they will render and perform Auto Trace.

Like I said, the above works fine for me. Auto Trace sees the lines generated by the plugins Audio Waveform and Audio Spectrum. Are they set to Analog Lines, like you said earlier?

If you want it on another layer, select that mask, Mask 1 in the layer named “Auto-traced Black Solid 1” and paste it into another layer, Add the effect Fill, it should be animated and ready to go.

[Mike Clasby]

“Other apps remember the basic fact that “yes, I do want to render that same video the same way” ”

1) So are you having trouble making a Template?

For your comp named “render me”, “Ctrl M” means Render this Comp and opens the Render Que. Then in the dropdown “Output Module” you can choose a Template, “Lossless” is the default on a PC. Anyway, click the “Custom” at the bottom of the dropdown and then make the Render whatever you need, like QuickTime>Animation Codec>Spatial Quality:Hi(75), Depth:Millions of Color +, Audio Output: your settings… So you have your one render setup the way you want, then click “OK” at the bottom.

Now back in the main Render Queue, click the Output Module Drop Down Again, and choose “Make Template” From the bottom. Give it a name, like “render me Master”, then just choose “render me Master” from the drop down whenever you want to render “render me”.

2) I guess I don’t understand why you are rendering out the comp named “movie” every time you want to render “render me”. Can’t you just have the comp “movie” in the comp “render me” and let AE render the subcomp “movie” on it’s way to rendering “render me”?

[Mike Clasby]

It’s all a matter of changing the “Track Type” and adjusting the “Motion Target”.

These two tuts are for Perspective Corner Pin Tracks.

Keep motion in perspective

https://studio.adobe.com/us/tips/tip.jsp?p=1&id=100241&xml=aft65cornerpin

Using the new Motion Tracker

https://studio.adobe.com/us/tips/tip.jsp?p=1&id=487&xml=aft6ttmotiontracker