Darby Edelen
Forum Replies Created
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Here’s a list for you to check over:
-Make sure Draft 3D (between Live Update and the Shy switch above your timeline) is off
-Make sure Depth of field is enabled on the camera
-Make sure Blur level is set to 100%
-Set the Aperture to a high(er) value like 100-300 just to see if you get any blur
After looking at your project file I can tell you that you have Draft 3D enabled in your comp, I disabled it and the blur came through just fine (although very heavy, meaning you probably already tried all the other steps on the list).
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA -
That would be Simulation > Wave World.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA -
If you don’t need to control where the varying shades/colors appear then I would definitely say that some blocky fractal noise is your best friend on this one.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
Try using a particle system or two. I prefer Trapcode Particular, but Particle Playground will work for this purpose.
What you want is to have one particle system shooting out red particles and the other shooting out green, pre-comp these and (optionally) change their blend modes to Add (this will result in yellow where the 2 particles overlap). These particles will be your heat distortion.
Now use the pre-comp for the Distort>Displacement Map effect in your final comp. Displacement Map will use Red by default for horizontal distortions and Green for vertical distortions (hence the red and green particles).
As Dave suggested, you can also use Fractal Noise with rapid evolution and some vertical translation to add a little bit of global, but more uniform, distortion.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
Time Displacement will look at the solid before the Radial Gradient is applied, you need to pre-comp the solid (Move all attributes) and then use the pre-comp as the source for the time displacement.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
You could find a way to make some cool swirly effects with the Time > Time Displacement effect, it takes a while to render, but can be useful for such effects:
All you really need is an image that you rotate in a pre-comp, and a radial gradient to control the Time Displacement effect. Giving it a sense of depth might be difficult, but you could use multiple copies (I recommend pre-rendering after you have your Time Displacement down) or a Displacement Map generated from the swirly.
One thing that I’ll mention if you go the Displacement Map route is that the ubiquitous white/black gradient used for this effect most of the time is not ideal in most situations. I posted on this recently, try searching the forum for ‘Normal Map’ if you need some ideas.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
I would recommend creating a motion path for only one of the boats. Then copy and paste that path onto the other layers and offset them in time.
You could also use an expression on each of the layers to look at the first layer’s position offset in time for their position:
topLayer = thisComp.layer(1);
n = index – 1;
offset = 1; //offset in seconds from the previous boat’s position.topLayer.position.valueAtTime(time – n * offset);
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
Try adding hold keyframes to the Frequency property of the Radio Waves effect. For example, make a hold keyframe of 1.00 at 0;00 and another hold keyframe of value 0 at 2;00. This would give you 2 waves*. You can then copy and paste that series of hold keyframes along your timeline wherever you want 2 waves to emit.
Alternatively you could add another hold keyframe with a 0 value at 3;00 and apply a loopOut(); expression to the frequency, this would cause a 1 second pause (the difference in time between the first 0 value hold keyframe and the second) between bursts.
*The first burst of waves will have 3 waves, but after that it will only cause 2 to emit… This is probably because Radio Waves forces a wave to emit at the first frame even with a 0 frequency.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
If you want to change the color of the entire snowflake you can try using the Generate > Fill effect. Alternatively, if you have Illustrator you can change the color there, which would give you more options in terms of style/strokes/fills.
You could also use Layer Styles if you’re working with AE CS3.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
Your footage is currently set to “Separating (Lower Field)”
Is this correct? If your footage is progressive then it should not have field separation on, if it was recorded with a pulldown then that should be removed.
If your footage is, in fact, interlaced lower field first, then you should go into Interpret Footage (cmd+f on Mac, ctrl+f on PC with the footage item selected) and try the “Preserve Edges” checkbox.
If you remove fields from a progressive source you end up with a loss in lines of resolution.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA