Distort footage with motion vectors (datamosh)

[Darby Edelen]

The distort>displacement map effect will distort footage along the horizontal and vertical axes based on input from 2 color channels. With some adjustments to the motion vector data you should be able to get something acceptable.

Darby Edelen

[Andrew Finch]

As far as I am aware, the Displacement map effect can only deal with one frame at a time. Every frame it would be starting over with the unaffected source image instead of building on movement applied in the previous frame.

[Walter Soyka]

The Echo effect may be useful for accumulating.

Sapphire has a few variations on this idea, too — S_Feedback, S_TimeAverage, S_Trails.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
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[Andrew Finch]

Are you saying to use time echo on the motion vector pass?

That might make an interesting smear, but since the vector information moves with the pixel who’s motion is being described – adding the vectors spatially would not produce a map that could be used to compute the location of a pixel after multiple frames. – unless I’m misunderstanding.

[Dogus Aslan]

you can take a look at re:vision. they have a plugin called real smart motion blur. it has the ability to use motion vectors.

[Noel Powell]

this is a bit late, but I was able to recreate the datamosh transition look in After Effects using a combination of displacement map, motion tracking, and the echo effect. You can see examples in the first 90 seconds of this videotutorial. There’s also some examples in my demo video
It’s not a perfect reproduction, but I think it’s pretty close, depending on the footage that’s used.

After Effects templates – lens flares, light leaks, old film effects, digital glitches, VHS glitches, and more: https://CreationEffects.com

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[Johnson Thomasson]

Hi Noel,

I love what you were able to do with the datamosh effect. I’m trying to use motion vectors for displacement for a different application. Would you be willing to share the method you came up with?

Best,
Johnson

[Lasse Gjertsen]

Did you ever find a solution for this, Andrew? I’ve been trying to find a way to do this for years. Anybody?!

[Andrew Finch]

Funny you should ask… its been 4 years since I first posted this question but just today I was working with motion vectors in Nuke for something unrelated and discovered the SmartVector toolset, I don’t know if this is a new feature or if I just missed it back in 2013 but it appears to be capable of generating and applying motion vectors in the way we would want. I have not directly tried to datamosh with it but it seems like it has the potential:

Here is a video showing it being used for paint work, but datamoshing would just be an extension of this:
https://vimeo.com/164386355

Seems like it could produce some pretty spectacular results

I’m using NukeX 10.5v1 (I don’t know what version it was introduced in)

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