Wave World and more Producers

[David Bogie]

You’ll need a more sophisticated physics simulation system. We explored standing wave sims a few days ago, scroll down a bit maybe.

Some 3d modeling apps will do interference patterns, or so I’ve been told. You can even pop open the Grapher in Apple’s OS10 and create animations of complex math functions that look like interference patterns.

bogiesan

[Darby Edelen]

You can blend several layers with Wave World applied, each effect with only one producer active, to achieve your desired result.

In my own experimentation with this technique I’ve found that the best results are achieved by setting the additional layers of Wave World to ‘Linear Light.’ You’ll then need to apply a Levels effect to these layers (after the Wave World effect) and increasing Output Black to 0.25 (in the range 0-1, if your levels effect is 0-255 then you’d use 64) and decreasing the Output White to 0.75 (again 0-1, if your levels sliders are 0-255 then use 192).

You can then have as many producers as there are layers in this composition.

Darby Edelen

[David Bogie]

One of us has misunderstood the OP:
> I need the ripples to emanate from lots of different points around the outside of the image and clash into each other. < Since Darby has answered, I'll assume the mistake was mine. My error lies in assuming the physical interactions between wavefronts were desired more than the interaction between the grayscales. For instance, if you have an alpha map on one of the layers, the other WWs will have grayscale interactivity but won't exactly be influenced by the main layer's alpha map. You'd have to apply the same alpha map to all WWs. I love it when the major wonks come by and fix our (my) misperceptions. bogiesan

[Darby Edelen]

[david bogie] “For instance, if you have an alpha map on one of the layers, the other WWs will have grayscale interactivity but won’t exactly be influenced by the main layer’s alpha map. You’d have to apply the same alpha map to all WWs.”

Or apply the alpha to the pre-comp that contains all of your grayscale WW layers 🙂 Or even put the layer with alpha at the bottom and enable the Preserve Transparency switch on the others (this sometimes causes fringing with the more ‘exotic’ blend modes though).

Luckily waves are very theoretically predictable in their interactions, they just add or subtract their amplitudes from one another. Unfortunately there are far too many external factors involved in the real world to account for all of them in a simulation. Which is why I keep saying we should roll back to The World v1.0, simplify man! 😉

Darby Edelen

[Darby Edelen]

[david bogie] “I love it when the major wonks come by and fix our (my) misperceptions.”

Half the time I’m not even sure if I’m answering the OP’s question. Seeing different perspectives, even misperspectives 🙂 on the problem and the solution can provide a lot of great insights. Don’t hold back!

Darby Edelen