• Adobe After Effects

  Back ground loops

  Posted by Malcolm Desoto on September 12, 2007 at 3:35 pm

  I might be taking on the local news. I plan on making a major upgrade to the current production standard.

  I’m looking for some generic BG loops like alot of news channels have.

  Example:

  I know of digital juice, but would rather make them myself if at all possible. I know there’s some stuff you can do with fractal noise, as demonstrated by Maltaannon.

  Any other tutorials/resources out there?

  Thanks.

  Darby Edelen replied 18 years, 1 month ago 3 Members · 5 Replies
• 5 Replies

• 

  Darby Edelen

  September 12, 2007 at 4:22 pm

  Most of the background elements in the examples you showed probably do not loop, but are instead created to be longer than the segment they will run behind. This would be especially true of the introductory elements.

  That said, I can give you some pointers on looping animations (which is pretty much all I do all day long for DVD Menus).

  For loops you just need to remember to make sure that the end of the animation is exactly the same as the beginning of the animation. There are a lot of techniques that can help with this.

  Obviously some effects (such as Fractal Noise) have an ‘Evolution’ property that can be set to loop every x rotations. Any time this is offered to you, you should use it.

  Others, such as Wave Warp, have a ‘Phase’ property that naturally loops on every rotation. Whenever I use Wave Warp I don’t use the ‘Speed’ property and instead I manually animate the ‘Phase’ property as this gives me a greater degree of control over the way the animation looks at its in and out points.

  There are also expressions that can help you:

  loopOut();

  and

  loopIn();

  Both of these work fairly well without supplying any parameters to the expression. After the last keyframe (or before the first keyframe, in the case of loopIn) of the property that the expression is applied to they loop the values of the property.

  The most valuable parameters to supply these expressions are:

  loopOut(“continue”); //Causes the values to continue to change at the same rate as they were at the last keyframe

  loopOut(“pingpong”); //Causes the values to loop back and forth. If A is the first keyframe and B is the last keyframe of the property, then this causes the values to go A->B, B->A, A->B, etc.

  loopOut(“cycle”); //This is the default if none are supplied and causes the property to loop A->B, A->B, A->B, etc.

  loopOut(“offset”); //Loops the change of values of the property. If a layer moves from [0,0] to [0, 20] in 1 second then after the last keyframe [0,20] the layer will move from [0,20] to [0,40] in 1 second (an identical change in value as the first move, only using the last keyframe as a starting point).

  Any property can be effected by these loopOut()/loopIn() expressions. I commonly pre-compose a short looping Fractal Noise layer, time-remap the pre-composition in the final comp and apply a loopOut(); to the time-remap property.

  If you have any more specific questions, I’d be glad to help.

  Darby Edelen
  DVD Menu Artist
  Left Coast Digital
  Aptos, CA
• 

  Malcolm Desoto

  September 12, 2007 at 4:37 pm

  Thanks for the pointers, very informative.
• 

  Malcolm Desoto

  September 12, 2007 at 4:51 pm

  “They’re clannish. They talk to each other. They use special lingo. If they don’t know a certain person in the business, they know someone who does.”

  ah ha. This is true.

  Well, I’m only taking on a “section” of the local news, which is actually a 5 min spot for a local paper. I’m not redesigning a station’s entire look.

  The station only broadcasts in 4:3 SD. I’m pretty much doing this five minute segment, wrapping it up, and handing the station a tape. No, servers, no live graphics.

  I am aware that this could be a bit of a hassle though. I don’t even want to do the entire news broadcast for the same reasons you already mentioned.

  Thanks for the heads up!

  I’ll check Giant Octopus and VDO.

  Thanks.
• 

  Alan Jones

  April 23, 2008 at 12:32 pm

  okay, dumb question here: how exactly do you do this –
  Any property can be effected by these loopOut()/loopIn() expressions. I commonly pre-compose a short looping Fractal Noise layer, time-remap the pre-composition in the final comp and apply a loopOut(); to the time-remap property.

  I created a looping fractal noise comp, created a new comp and added the fractal noise comp to it, highlighted the fractal comp in my final comp and did Layer/Time/Enable Time remapping. That’s about as far I’ve got. Can you help?

  thanks,
  aj
• 

  Darby Edelen

  April 23, 2008 at 3:37 pm

  [Alan Jones] “highlighted the fractal comp in my final comp and did Layer/Time/Enable Time remapping. That’s about as far I’ve got. Can you help?”

  First you’ll need to go 1 frame before the last keyframe of the time-remapping keyframes (hit ‘u’ to reveal these and any other animating properties), make a new keyframe there and delete the old last keyframe (The last frame of a composition is empty, so you want your loop to end on the frame before the last frame).

  Then option-click (alt-click on a PC) the stopwatch by the Time Remap property on the left. This will add an expression. In the expression field type:

  loopOut()

  And that should do it.

  Darby Edelen
  Lead Designer
  Left Coast Digital
  Santa Cruz, CA

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