Dust/Sand Transition

[David Tunnell]

RoRK,

You won’t believe what works like a charm!!!

I took a black solid and applied Scatterize

at :06 set

Scatter – 0
Right Twist – 0
Left Twist – 0

at :02

Scatter – 1024
Left and Right Twist to +180

I set the footage Alpha matte to my scatter layer.

Then added the following to my footage layer

Shatter

Set to squares 200 repitions.

Then keyed force on to go from zero to 5 radius a little behind the beginning key for the scatterize.

Added Fast Blur to go from 0 to 5 with the shatter.

Fade the entire footage layer out toward the end of the effects.

I am playing around with the gravity settings for Shatter to try and get a more organic feel, but this works pretty good and looks pretty cool and renders fast!

I plan to do a real final render tonight, if you like I can post it and send you a link.

Dave

Thanks,

David Tunnell
Tunnell Vision Productions

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

This sounds interesting, Dave. Are you using the Scatterized layer as a Gradient for Shatter? That, plus gravity may help in creating a more organic feel. Yeah, please post your final movie.

Cheers
RoRK

broadcastGEMs.com – the leader in customizable royalty-free animated backdrops

[David Tunnell]

RoRK,

While this method did not give me dust per si, it did give me an interesting result that works for my purposes. I have been contracted to produce 15 :15 second promos for a local religious station that will run these during block programming. They will feature footage of local landmarks with a scripture then go into presenting the logo. I modeled the logo in 3DS max, lit it and did a camera move. If you look closely you will see the “God Creates Adam” Michelangelo painting reflecting across the front as it comes in.

Here is the final example:

https://www.tunnellvision.net/WBNA_Demo/WBNA_Promo_Template3_B.html

I appreciate your help and I intend to keep trying ways to make this dust transition work.

Thanks,

David Tunnell
Tunnell Vision Productions

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

Hi David, thanks for sharing your work. Even though we couldn’t solve the technical constraints it still looks pretty good – what you came up with. Too often, folks learn something and disappear.

FWIW, did I notice Particular in action with the pointy star wipe effect? If you have Particular, it’s supposed to be more memory efficient than Particle Playground.

To get a more organic movement of the pixels, you can also look into using a Displacement Map. The actual grayscale map can be animated to time the displacement with the scatterize effect.

Bestest
RoRK

broadcastGEMs.com – the leader in customizable royalty-free animated backdrops

[David Tunnell]

Yes I have Particular. I have not dug into Particular as deeply as I should. I have seen some incredible stuff done.

Do you mean use the matte I created with Scatterize, then pre-compose it and then use that as a displacement map? I also thought about taking some footage I have of smoke, using that as an inverted alpha matte so that after the pixels erupt they appear to blow off the screen.

I often lurk around here, but there are an awful lot of people who know more than I do that offer answers.

Here is another little test project I did that turned out pretty cool.

https://www.tunnellvision.net/metaltest/BC_Metal_Test.html

Thanks,

David Tunnell
Tunnell Vision Productions

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

[David Tunnell] “Do you mean use the matte I created with Scatterize, then pre-compose it and then use that as a displacement map? I also thought about taking some footage I have of smoke, using that as an inverted alpha matte so that after the pixels erupt they appear to blow off the screen.”

Adding live footage of smoke or dust always helps to sell such effects.

The Displacement Map can look something like the matte that was used (for gravity?) in the Text to Sand tutorial. When applied correctly, the pixels around the centre will be displaced more than the other pixels, at any point in time. Again, this helps to sell the effect.

Additionally, an application of Bezier Warp or Bulge at the initial point of implosion/explosion also helps.

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