[David Byrne]

“6) Generate an animated texture with large-scale soft fractal noise and animated threshold level.
7) Use this animated texture for the “draw-on” effect”

I love this idea for the drawing on off the wireframe – looks great!

In the past I’ve used Camera Cut-Off for the same effect but obviously that is limited. However can look pretty cool, but its mono-directional!
I also used a world position pass as a luma matte to reveal lines, which allows for a more subtle feather and more elegant effect (plus you can rotate the angle of the reveal etc), both of these are worth exploring if you have the time!

This is the first reveal mentioned – using the Camera Cut-Off option under Render Settings
12552_flythroughrefinerymasterv01.mp4.zip

Animo Motion Graphics
Freelancer, UK

[David Byrne]

Here’s an attempt to help you out –

12551_simplecrowdnoparticles.aep.zip

Its a crowd of 100 shaded dots moving independently. You can easily drag this comp into another, duplicate it and reposition to make larger crowd sizes.

It has a ‘Crowd Control’ master layer that you can change the tint of the crowd easily, or checkbox for a rainbow colour effect.
You can also control the speed and movement of the dots.

To affect the size of the dots simple change the size in the sprite control. Warning – too much movement or size difference may become noticeable when they interact due to the shading layer (a fractal noise adjustment layer).

BUILT as follows –
(this isn’t exactly the same as I did it, I have simplified dimensions for ease of instruction)

I made one Dot, a circle shape layer, in a 100×100 comp. I then animated the position properties with a wiggle setting of

s=wiggle(comp(2,10);
[s[0]/4,s[1]];

That is – 2 times a second the dot moves vertically up to 10 pixels in either direction (up and down) and a quarter of that speed and amount left to right. I made the comp 30 seconds long.

I then dragged this precomp into a new comp ten times the width to make my row of cheering dots.
[Comp Width (1000×100)]
I duplicated the dot 9 times. Using Align and Distribute I quickly selected one dot and moved it far left, another far right, then selected all layers and using the Distribute panel selected Distribute Horizontally (the fifth option from left).
Now I manually dragged the layers to the left at random amounts. This is to taste – just enough that the particles move at a different speed to each other.

I then moved this ‘Row of Fans’ precomp into a grid precomp and again duplicated it 9 times. Moving one row to the top, one to the bottom I then selected all layers and Distributed Vertically.
Again I manually dragged the layers to the left at random amounts. This is to taste – just enough that the particles move at a different speed to each other.

Now I added shading. I added Fractal Noise layer, set to Basic Block, 1.0 Complexity, Adjusted brightness and contrast to taste. I also scaled down to make it roughly 10 x 10 boxes. And changed blending to overlay.

Finally I precomposed all this into a Master comp – in my case I linked up some expressions to change colours, speed, etc from the master comp so no need to dive in, plus of course that means you could animate the crowd cheering a goal for example.

Hope this helps, happy to answer any questions and of course take suggestions.

Cheers!
Dave Byrne

Animo Motion Graphics
Freelancer, UK

[David Byrne]

Absolutely not a dumb question! (There are no such things)

I had exactly the same situation and get it fairly frequently – an issue of using combinations of MacBook on it’s own mostly but also onsite at various companies with various monitors as a second screen.

In my case, everything was in my saved workspace was normal except somehow the “Focus” Script UI Panel was sat half offscreen at the top. (amazing script btw – pretty much guaranteed to speed up your workflow).

If I reverted to single screen, it was fine. I tried moving the panel lower (still undocked) now I could reach the top bar, but then when I reattached my second screen it reverted to its problematic state, offscreen, at the top. Tried moving it using stretch arrows as sometimes work with the Mac OS windows, tried maximising the screen using the Tilde key (~) to see if that would reset it, tried changing the Workspace then changing back. None of this worked.

My solution for Mac –
Based on something around what others have mentioned (thanks everyone) –
go to Settings > Displays > Select Scaled then the far right option of more space
– now close the troublesome window. Then revert back to your usual display setting and reopen your scripts panel or plugin and it will appear somewhere central where you can move it around to your preference.

The key it seems is to find a way to close the panel then reopen it, as repositioning it seems to be a temporary fix, undone when you revert to your original setup, even after moving the panel around. So the unplugged second screen might work for you – if you close down the panel. However using Display settings takes about 10 seconds and so I think is the preferential solution.

Hope this helps some people and don’t forget once you have a good set-up to save that Workspace!

Cheers!

Animo Motion Graphics
Freelancer, UK

[David Byrne]

Also worth noting that the end globe is inverted and probably won’t be made up of dots, a simple CC Sphere of the precomped map layer would do that job, and save rendering time of getting something without the hassle of multiplying enough particles to make it look as ‘solid’.

As others have said, looks like Form mainly, but CC Ball Action would do it, then have a second copy of the same globe precomped map for the solid end globe.

Cheers!
Animö

[David Byrne]

Hey Dan, thanks for your fast feedback mate.

I actually just came on to post my solution and saw your response so will try shortly! Sure it’s better than my convoluted version, but effectively here was my solution:

Mulder=thisComp.layer(“Scale of Comps Controller”).effect(“Scale Slider”)(“Slider”);
Scully=thisComp.height/Mulder;
Skinner=thisComp.layer(index-1).transform.position[0]+thisComp.width/Mulder;
Krycek=thisComp.layer(index-1).transform.position[1]+Scully*0;

[Skinner,Krycek];

if
(Skinner > thisComp.width-1){
[0,Scully+thisComp.layer(index-1).transform.position[1]];

}else{[Skinner,Krycek];};

The change was to say that when it hits the end of the row (ie the Precomp position exceeds the width of the comp), as well as adjusting the xPos back to 0, the yPos should not only take the Scully measurement (ie the Height of the Comp divided by the Slider Control scaler) but also add on the previous layer’s yPosition. Relatively simple, for some reason didn’t think of it until after posting, guess getting it all down on paper and talking it over with a colleague helped my creative juices!

As the only time that the position shifts to the next row is when it hits the width of the Master Comp, we can safely assume that the previous layer’s Height will always be the parameter to add to the Scully measurement.

I’ve played around with it briefly and with over 100-odd comps it all rearranges perfectly to within the confines of my Master Comp. (If I reduce the scaler to say 5 again, I have a lot of unwanted Precomps out of sight of my Master Comp but hey, thats the point, they can be added or deleted as needed by the size of the precomps, until they fill the Master Comp.

The only thing now to do is make each a different precomp!

Thanks again Dan will try out your expression as well, good to learn some new techniques!

Cheers!
Dave Byrne
Animo Motion Graphics

[David Byrne]

Hello from the future!

Probably no use to you now mate, but to anyone searching for this technique who stumbles across this thread!

I figured out a way to make a preset for this, after a bit of fiddling around. Of course Dave’s route is the simplest but I wanted a way to be able to apply a simple animation to many many layers of text and not have to split them all up. So here is my solution:

You need to add two Property>Opacity Animators to the Text layer.

Animator 1:
Range Selector 1:
Start: 100%
End: Keyframe from 50% to 100%
Offset:0%
Opacity: 0%

Animator 2:
Range Selector 1:
Start: Keyframe from 50% to 0%
End: 0%
Offset: 0%
Opacity: 0%

You can now adapt the speed by simply adjusting the keyframes but remember to keep the distance between the two animators keyframed parameters consistent if you want a uniform transition from the centre of the text.

Also of course you can change to be by character, word, line etc by adapting the Advanced tab of the Ranger Selector.

Finally if you’re likely to be using this again, why not make a preset based on it? Add it to your preset palette and it can save a lot of back and forth copying of effects.

Please let me know any issues and I will try to help.

Cheers!

Animö