[Mike Clasby]

I just hack Dan and others expressions. Sort of the Dr Frankenstein of expressions world.

[Mike Clasby]

I’d just take your shadow layer (the duplicate) and add Drop Shadow or Radial Shadow, set to Shadow Only, then feather it with Softness. I’d drop all the Opacity and Levels off of it, you can control opacity and color within the two plugins.

[Mike Clasby]

Opps, sorry I didn’t see you already tried the scaling.

[Mike Clasby]

I can’t get your grid expression to work, maybe because I’m on AE6.5, but I dropped the “transform” and still no luck.

For Grids, I like Dan’s Grid expression, below, adjusted for an 8×8 grid, which is what I think you’re doing for you’re 320×240 layers:

numRows = 8;
numCols = 8;

row = Math.floor((index – 1)/numCols);
col = (index – 1)%numCols;
x = col*width + width/2;
y = row*height + height/2;
xOffset = (this_comp.width – numCols*width)/2;
yOffset = (this_comp.height – numRows*height)/2;

[x,y] + [xOffset,yOffset]

This goes on Position of all layers, not other positioning is necessary. Make sure they’re at the top of the stack.

If this doesn’t solve your problem, maybe try making the 320×240 layers slightly smaller, by scaling them to 99%, this leaves a transparent gap between layers.

Or

Precomp all the layers in the grid (move attributes), then, add the effect, Render>Grid.

Grid

Size From Width and Height Sliders
Width: 320
Height:240
Color: Black
Blending: Multiply

and add the Effect, Unmult (Knoll Unmult, freebie, Goggle it) to make the black grid transparent.

I think the resize above is easier.

Good luck.

[Mike Clasby]

My Bad… maybe.

Do you have the audio in the comp?

Do you have a layer named “Audio Amplitude”?

To do that, take that audio layer and select it, then, Animation>Keyframe Assistant>Convert Audio To Keyframes. That gives you a new layer named “Audio Amplitude” with an Effect named “Both Channels” that has a Slider with keyframes for the audio’s amplitude (loudness of both channels). If you did that and the layer exists in the comp, the expression should work. The error message sounds like the layer is not there or it has a different name.

What I did above was on Dan’s page, just under “Design” that I recommended in my third post above.

https://www.motionscript.com/design-guide/basic-audio.html

Sorry if I inadvertently skipped a step, creating the Audio Amplitude layer?

Is that the problem?

[Mike Clasby]

Sorry, I can’t read the error message, what does it say?

[Mike Clasby]

Did you try a little pre-Blur?

https://av.adobe.com/tips/aft6ttgreenscreen_580_456.mov

Maye a super tight junk matte would help, see Aharon’s tut. It uses Auto Trace to make a tight matte and the hair on the talent is better. Bad Hair Day be gone:

https://forums.creativecow.net/articles/rabinowitz_aharon/junk_mattes/index.htm

Also search for “DV Key” footage, lots of stuff on that. Like this:

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/2/913090

[Mike Clasby]

Wow, that a lotta line 1.

My old, but nimble English teacher would have said, “That’s a run-on sentence” three times before she wacked me with a ruler.

Just curious why you didn’t use the expression recommended in the earlier post?

And, hmmm.. did you Convert Audio to keyframes? Maybe you don’t have that layer.

Anyway, line 1 would be:

minAudio = 0;

Then line 2 would be:

maxAudio = 15;

And the whole expression would have 10 lines (I’m counting the spaces, too) and look like this:

————————————–

minAudio = 0;// line 1 expression starts here
maxAudio = 15;
maxStretch = 2.0;

audioLev = thisComp.layer(“Audio Amplitude”).effect(“Both Channels”)(“Slider”);

stretch = linear(audioLev, minAudio, maxAudio, 1.0, maxStretch);

[scale[0],scale[1] * stretch]// line 10 expression ends here

———————————————–

That works for me.

Otherwise, maybe I’m being “Homer-ed”…

“Are you having a laugh? Is he havin’ a laugh.”

Sorry I’ve been watching to many “EXTRAS”… that Ricky Gervais’s punch-line.

[Mike Clasby]

Just curious, what’s the Positional expression?

Can you modify Dan’s auto-orient expression, here:

https://www.motionscript.com/design-guide/auto-orient-y-only.html

It uses toWorld between two points. Maybe an altternative to “Math.atan2” or subtract 90 degrees from something???

Also, t-would be a pain, but you could always take that Positional expression and Animation>Keyframe Assistant>Convert Expression to Keyframes, then use “orient to path”. Bad idea I know, sooo many keyframes and expressions are so clean.

[Mike Clasby]

I just realized its a quick and foolproof way to make a master layer that controls layer effects in other comps. Foolproof is import, since I’m easily fooled.