Circles melt into one another effect?? Similar to metaballs in 3d??

[Filip Vandueren]

Take a look at this:

It’s this:

with Contrast = +95

just two soft circles multiplied.

[Doug Jacobson]

Filip,

This is cool. Can you explain in a little more detail how to do it?

Thanks,
Doug

[Filip Vandueren]

Hi Doug,

basically it’s just two copies of a square solid (100x100px) with a ramp filter.
Set the ‘Ramp Shape’ to ‘radial ramp’,
and the ‘start of ramp’ set to the middle of the solid (50,50 in this case)

You could also make a radial black to white gradient in Photoshop.

so you’ve got two (or more) copies, set their modes to multiply (the comp-background should be white) and animate them.

that gives you something like this:

I added an adjustment layer with a brightness-contrast-filter.
I often use brightness-contrast with a very high contrast (93-98%), that way it gives you a softer kind of anti-aliased threshold-effect.

So only the grey values that are dark enough show through, because of the multiply, when the two circles get nearer, the pixels in between get darker too, so when they reach the threshold, a connection between the two is visible.

here’s another variation using blurred text and a radial gradient.

I’ve included the project file for the blobby text: blobtext.aep

it just took a few minutes to tweak the blur-level, brightness-contrast setting and opacity of the layers.

[Filip Vandueren]

Sorry for all the animated GIFs

It’s staring to look like a 1994 website 😉

[Hans Van vliet]

well, since 80’s type faces and gaudy colous are back in, your officialy ahead of your time! hurrah, I’ll let everyone know the 1994 is back.

..::hunz..

[Doug Jacobson]

Thanks for the help. Now I’m cookin’ with gas!

[Jeremy Grubaugh]

WOW! Just revisted my post and what a perfect response. Thanks for all the visuals and thanks for taking the time. i love this place 🙂