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magnifying “bar” – linear, not round
My father used to have a long skinny bar of glass which magnified an entire row of type. It was a magnifying glass, but in the shape of a ruler. The edges of the type got very distorted.
What made me remember that neat old thing was that I recently saw an effect (on the Digital Juice “Ready2Go” promo video): a long skinny band of magnification passes over the screen, magnifying whatever is under it. On the Digital Juice version, the edges are hard. It’s a very cool effect, and I’d like to learn how to make that (without buying the DJ product, most of which is of no interest to me).
But I’d also like to learn how to make the edges of the magnification a bit distorted, just as with my father’s magnifying “bar”.
I’ve been playing with various effects plug-ins in AE (NI Glass Lozenge, BCC Bulge, Distort/Magnify, Ripple…) but without success.
Any tips would be most appreciated.
Bob C
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7 Replies
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Make an adjustment layer the height and width of the magnifier. Apple Distort > Transform and increase the scale.
My Dad had the same type of magnifying glass…
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Thanks! That works. Is there any way to make the edges rounded off, as with the classic round magnifying glass effect?
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Try this and season to taste.
Draw a shape layer rectangle that is larger than and fully surrounds the text.
Shape Layer Add > a Gradient Fill.
Twirl down the Gradient Fill controls and Edit Gradient.
Adjust the gradient so that it is black at either end fading to white in the center. You may need to rotate the Shape Layer so that this gradient lines up over a line of text. Scale it vertically so that the black edges spill into the space between the lines of text. You’ll need to lower the opacity of the shape layer so you can see the text below.
Between the text and shape layers add an Adjustment layer. To this apply Effects > Distort > Displacement Map.
Set Horizontal Displacement to 0, vertical to something in the negative tens (depends on your text size.)
Use Luminance for Vertical Displacement.
Then set the Displacement Map Layer to the Shape layer.
Now you can animate the vertical position of the shape layer to “roll” the effect over the lines of text.
You can parent a ruler graphic to the shape layer or vice versa.Joey Foreman
Editor/Compositor/VFX Artist -
I’ve made a quick project – download and use at will.
Enjoy!
1603_magnifyingbar.aep.zipTudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist -
Wow, thank you so much. I haven’t tried Joey’s tutorial yet, but I loaded this AEP. I am running AE 4, which does not include DE Freeform AE. Is there a substitute? I don’t want to buy Freeform, because apparently it is included in AE 5 anyway.
Thanks again to all of you for your kind help!
Bob
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Here’s the same using Bulge- not as good as DE Free Form but close.
1605_magnifyingbarallaenativefx.aep.zipTudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist -
Thank you Ted. I had to move into another project, but will be able to try your AE project next week. I appreciate your help!
Bob C
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