Creating falling raindrops on glass

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

Best to give more info than less when you ask a question- post the image, it matters a lot if there’s only a solid color beyond the glass or if it’s a window through which you can see a street for example.
Are you planning on compositing something behind or just animate that image?
Answer these for a specific answer.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Asaf Bochman]

My apologies about the vague question.

I actually went about it backwards and ended up finding CC Mr. Mercury after I posted the question.

I will end up just animated the rain drops, there will be nothing behind it.

https://i.imgur.com/ienuc.jpg

View post on imgur.com

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

In your image there is a background- it is blurred and non descript, but there is a background.
To give the impression of water drops sliding down the glass you need that background to be clean, undistorted, without the water drops on it. You can paint that in Photoshop to clear out the path for the drops you want to animate. You can select then each drop you want animated and cut it out. Use that to composite on top of your plate. you need then to create a displacement mask in the shape of the path on which the drop will fall – a black and white image – black means no distortion, white is the maximum. Animate that displacement map to reveal the path as the drop goes down. Use it to displace the plate and to give the impression you’re after.
CC Mercury may be able to give you some good animations you can use as displacement maps as well.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Asaf Bochman]

Thanks. How do I apply the displacement mask to the drop image?

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

You do not apply the distortion to the drop- you create an animated shape in your displacement map that matches the animation of the drop and you apply that to the background image. You can comp the drop layer on top using a transfer mode like screen or overlay.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Mato Kokotic]

Try something like in this post (principle is same):
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/2/999156

Here is AEP, feel free to disassemble it at will 😀

2300_bottlerefraction.rar.zip

[Jonathan Ziegler]

Hey there, you may also want to just shoot a glass pane with a plain black background (or make one in AE) and add water drops to it. I would first comp the glass on black and adjust the blur to match your green plate first, then comp the 2 together. This may actually be easier without the green one you already have.

Jonathan Ziegler
https://www.electrictiger.com/
520-360-8293