[Roland R. kahlenberg]

Expressions can’t read a layer’s luminance values. But Particle Playground can. You can use PP’s Grid property to create the grid for you, using a Layer Map of the videos. This one’s achievable but a lot of planning and tweaking are required if you are particular where a specific layer sits within the grid.

To get each layer within the grid to react to the luminance level of a source layer, you’ll need to create a Property Mapper.

I suggest that you take a look at my Fun in Particle Playland COW tutorial to get you started on working with PP’ Grid, creating and controlling Layer Maps and setting up a Property Mapper.

HTH
Roland Kahlenberg
broadcastGEMs
customizable animated backdrops with Adobe After Effects project files

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

Use the Audio to Keyframes Keyframe Assistant(?) in 6.5 to do the same thing that MotionMath did for the tutorial. Everthing else should identical.

HTH
Roland Kahlenberg
broadcastGEMs
customizable animated backdrops with Adobe After Effects project files

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

Use the Audio to Keyframes Keyframe Assistant(?) in 6.5 to do the same thing that MotionMath did for the tutorial. Everthing else should identical.

HTH
Roland Kahlenberg
broadcastGEMs
customizable animated backdrops with Adobe After Effects project files

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

If your text layer is moving, it could very be that the light isn’t hitting it at an angle to allow for the shadow to appear on the desk. Essentially, there are three lyers to content with, the light, the object and the shadow. If they do not form a straight line then there may be occasions when the shadow will not appear.

Perhaps Dan can come up with an Expression script to prevent such occurrences.

HTH
Roland Kahlenberg
broadcastGEMs
customizable animated backdrops with Adobe After Effects project files

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

If your text layer is moving, it could very be that the light isn’t hitting it at an angle to allow for the shadow to appear on the desk. Essentially, there are three lyers to content with, the light, the object and the shadow. If they do not form a straight line then there may be occasions when the shadow will not appear.

Perhaps Dan can come up with an Expression script to prevent such occurrences.

HTH
Roland Kahlenberg
broadcastGEMs
customizable animated backdrops with Adobe After Effects project files

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

What Lux does is to provide a visible light source for AE’s lights. Without Lux, all you get are the light’s intensities coming form an invisible source – Lux gives you that source.

In this case, Lux won’t solve the problem.

HTH
Roland Kahlenberg
broadcastGEMs
customizable animated backdrops with Adobe After Effects project files

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

What Lux does is to provide a visible light source for AE’s lights. Without Lux, all you get are the light’s intensities coming form an invisible source – Lux gives you that source.

In this case, Lux won’t solve the problem.

HTH
Roland Kahlenberg
broadcastGEMs
customizable animated backdrops with Adobe After Effects project files

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

For cross-platform transfer, I’d prefer losslessly compressed TGAs sequence. They’re much more portable, have Aplha Channel support, provide for great quality, and can be played back without re-rendering on certain NLEs. Just my .02

Roland Kahlenberg
broadcastGEMs
customizable animated backdrops with Adobe After Effects project files

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

You will have to select either the keyframe or the i-beam of the mask shape property for this to work. And as Dan suggested, you will also have to select the position parameter’s keyframe or I-beam before pasting. There was some change but I can’t recall if it was implemented in 5.5 or 6 or even 6.5

Cheers
Roland Kahlenberg
broadcastGEMs
customizable animated backdrops with Adobe After Effects project files

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

My email’s been funky the last few days. I suggest that you watch Rick Gerard’s 5-minute COW Tutorial. In one of them, he does a pickwhip routine – sorry I’m not sure which one.

If you think you are pickwhipping correctly then all you have to do is to add the following text, including the = sign to the front of the script that was created by your pickwhipping. Just click within the Expression textbox area and you will be able to type it.
KeyframeVal=

Then type the following line, after the first line of script.

[KeyframeVal,KeyframeVal,position[2]]

The preceeding line will ensure that only the x and y axes are affected by the keyframe values created by SoundKey and the z-axis (denoted by position[2]) is unaffected and will maintain whatever values it has.

You can perform math operations on the x and y axes independently. As an example;
[KeyframeVal/2,KeyframeVal+25,position[2]]

HTH
Roland Kahlenberg
broadcastGEMs
customizable animated backdrops with Adobe After Effects project files