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Wavelike effect
Hi, guys new to the forums. However I was wondering how the wave effect is done like in smallville when clarke slows down and thier is ripples of waves surround him?
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8 Replies
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i haven’t seen the smallville effect, but using the effect displacement map and a wave like animated grayscale map seems like it would get you in the ball park.
to generate the wave like displacement map, you might want to try wave world… wave world rather complicated, but search the cow’s ae tutorials for ‘wave world’ and you can get an idea of how it works. you may want to try and manipulate a ‘ground’ layer if you need to manipulate the shape of the wave disortion, which will get a little tricky.
a simpler way (yet less natural way) to generate a wavelike displacement map might be radio waves. you can set it to use a mask as the shape if needed. it may work just fine for this effect.
Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
Thanks for the response kevin, I actually went through all the after effects basic training tutorials and I know you have more advanced ones here. But before I begin on a set course this is a prime example of the effect im looking for, I dont know how to explain it in words so heres a link to the youtube video. The clip is about 2minutes long, the second seen where clarke is running through the football field is what I was mainly looking at.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Tv5Yo4ZqK34&feature=related
which one do you think in your expertise should I use to accomplish that effect.
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it’s a pretty cool effect, but it will be a fair amount of work to get close in ae.
the displacement map effect will give you a similar distortion to the surrounding video, caustics is another effect that can produce a similar effect, but give you more options like highlights on the waves that might be useful (there is a tutorial here using caustics to create a pool of water, so you can see some of the options). cc glass is another that might work nicely.
the animation to use as a displacement map (within the effect displacement map) looks more like it was a particle generator, probably a 3d generator like trapcode’s particular. you may be able to use ae’s cc particle world too. particle generators can get pretty complex, and you won’t be using them in quite the way they were designed, which will complicate things more. look at some of the particle turtorials here, and at videocopilot.net (there are some tutorials there that also use cc glass for distortion, so you can see how that works).
it also looks like a separate (but similar settings wise) particle generator was used to add some color to the rippling. you may be able to use the same particle system, but add colorama (to color map the grayscale), some blur and change the blending modes and adjust levels/curves get a similar look.
it looks like you’ll also need to mask out the subject, so the distortion surrounds him rather than is over him. that will most likely involve rotoscoping with masks, or vector paint… check the tutorials for ‘rotoscoping’, it’s a pretty invloved frame-by-frame process (or nearly frame-by-frame depending on how precise you need to be).
if you are looking at this as a learning process, it is a pretty difficult exercise, but a good one. look at some of the material here, then start trying to apply a few of the techniques. post again with more questions as have them…
Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
wow thanks alot kevin that was really helpful im going to start tinkering with it and hopefully I can get proficiant enough so I can shoot my film this summer. So your saying it can be done with AE and I dont have to use a cg program right?
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[Kevin Camp] “he animation to use as a displacement map (within the effect displacement map) looks more like it was a particle generator, probably a 3d generator like trapcode’s particular. you may be able to use ae’s cc particle world too. particle generators can get pretty complex, and you won’t be using them in quite the way they were designed, which will complicate things more.”
I think that you might be able to generate good input for the displacement map if you can matte your subject and use a combination of the Echo effect and perhaps some fractal noise. Particles could also definitely help.
Darby Edelen
Designer
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA -
i’ll buy that… darby’s on to something. i think echo might work nicely if you have masked or keyed out the subject. you can adjust the ‘stepping’ or spacing of the iterations and how the iterations are blended together to create greater contrast to aid in the distortion of the displacement map effect. maybe add some blur prior.
that same displacement comp could then be overlaid with a blending mode to bring some of the subject color into the ripple effect.
Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
cool thanks sorry one more question I promise!, but what exactly in that clipped needed to use particles? I thought caustics would have been enough?
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caustics is similar to displacement map, in that you use a layer, footage or precomp as a grayscale map for the distortion.
often you can use an effect like wave world to generate realistic water-like waves, or maybe fractal noise, as the displacement map (note, you need to precomp the layer with wave world or fractal noise before displacement map or caustics can use it).
after seeing the sample, i thought you might be able to use a 3d particle generator to create a trail of wave-like particles that, when used as the displacement map, would appear to be like some sort of sonic-boom-like wake left behind the subject.
similarly, darby’s suggestion of using an effect like echo would also produce a trail of instances of the subject (if the subject was masked or keyed) that could then be used as the displacement map.
Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW
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