“Falling Skies” title breakup

[Simon Ubsdell]

Hi Tim

Your question got me thinking about more efficient ways to generate the randomness automatically and I’ve made you this template project that is probably more helpful than what I shared with you yesterday:

6253_interference.zip

Essentially what I realised is that you can create a replicator with those rectangular shapes that has a sequence behavior (with attached randomise behaviors) which keeps generating random blocks.

This is then applied as a mask to the scaled and repositioned Clone layer of your master composite.

In order to only see these blocks of the Clone layer occasionally and randomly, I used a randomise behavior for the Opacity of the layer – and then also applied a Quantize behavior to the Opacity so the Opacity would always only be 0 or 100%.

It probably sounds a lot more complicated than it is but it works just fine. I’ve also done the same with a layer of black blocks driven by another version of the same replicator with enough parameters tweaked to make it completely different. And I’ve even used that same Randomise/Quantize routine to add random frames of Bad TV by applying it to the effect Mix level.

Finally I’ve made a much better version of the random assemble and disassemble of the picture at the start and end.

Hope that’s of interest to you or anyone else looking to achieve this type of effect.

Simon Ubsdell
http://www.tokyo-uk.com

[Simon Ubsdell]

Hi Tim

Here’s a tutorial I’ve made that follows on from this discussion showing how to use the various techniques I’ve been describing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bybFfKeoLgc

Hope it’s of interest.

Simon Ubsdell
http://www.tokyo-uk.com

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[Tim Wilde]

Wow! and Whoa! Excellent work. Thank goodness for voobys so I could download and watch your video point by point. There’s a lot of content in it for a noob but the challenge is worth it.

Were those your children periodically yelling in the distance, or clients?

[Sandeep Sajeev]

Very nice, Simon!

[Simon Ubsdell]

Here’s a new Motion tutorial requested by a user who liked the look of the dummy title sequence I used in my Interference Glitch tutorial:

https://youtu.be/sMTS8QQr6N8

It shows how to make this effect:

https://youtu.be/yUsz7rVlqV0

Some useful hints and tips which include text styling using the indent filter and building a planet from scratch with procedural methods.

Hope it’s of interest to somebody.

Simon Ubsdell
http://www.tokyo-uk.com

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[Sandeep Sajeev]

That is a vey cool tutorial Simon. I got a lot out of it!

Thanks,
Sandeep.

[Simon Ubsdell]

Thanks, Sandeep.

Somebody on YouTube asked me how I made an earlier version of this sequence and I’d originally done it with Photoshop and stock image maps for the text and and the planet, but I thought it would be interesting to see if these could be done entirely procedurally in Motion only.

Your particles project got me thinking that there’s a lot more one could do with procedural techniques in Motion that I certainly haven’t thought about.

I did think about showing how to do the starfield background as well but that would have taken more time than I had available. Again it would have been perfectly possible, and doing it procedurally would have opened up more possibilities for animation with very slightly shifting and twinkling stars, drifting nebulae and some small amount of parallax – the kind of almost subliminal animation that can be really effective.

Simon Ubsdell
http://www.tokyo-uk.com

[Sandeep Sajeev]

Your sphere trick is fantastic – it never even crossed my mind to use it for something like this. I really liked the use of Caustics to simulate paths/terrain on your planets surface.

It blows my mind that you could actually fake a more elaborate 3D space scene pretty convincingly with some replication and clever comping/camera work. The toolset really is phenomenally deep.

But people just don’t want to know. I saw someone messing about with Precomps and manually staggering design elements in AE today, working on a broadcast open, and couldn’t help shaking my head – it would have taken him 30 seconds to get things the way he wanted using replicators.

I wonder if the MacPro update release will have any major additions. At the very least they should add an In Action page to the site and feature guys like you who really push the software.

Btw, hope you saw Mark’s tip of the hat to your Link posting on the latest episode of Macbreak Studio 🙂