Matthew Keane
Forum Replies Created
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The problem, as you say, is that the black-white gradient can only generate positive values… so I wondered whether a bit more fiddling around with Colorama to massage the gradient might do the trick to get the text to rotate over the peak… but then I think you’re going to run in to the same problem with the trough.
So, perhaps the image-sample expression is the way to go – if you sample a little way either side of the current pixel you’ll be able to work out whether the gradient is rising or falling and apply a positive or negative rotation as appropriate…
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The images make it much clearer, thanks!
Assuming you have Form version 2 (not sure this existed in v1), one of the twirly-down effects settings sections is called ‘Layer Maps’. I assume you’re using a custom sprite (logically, you can’t set rotation settings on ‘sphere’ particles), so you should see the last Layer Map setting for Rotation.
Layer Maps use a grayscale image to drive the animation of a parameter – so you should be able to select your Fractal Noise layer, already used for the displacement, as the layer for the Z-Rotation.
One problem I can see is that the Layer Map will map the luminance range from black-white to 0-100% change to your rotation, but you want both the peaks (white) and troughs (black) to be zero rotation. So you might find you need to duplicate your noise comp and apply an effect – maybe Colorama? – to shift the luminance range.
On the other hand, if you’re already playing with an image-sampling expression you might find it easier to tweak your expression to affect the rotation as well as the y-position.
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Hi,
When you say that you want the text to rotate, do you want it to look as if it is lying on the surface of the water and reacting to the waves? Rather than an auto-orient option, I wonder whether you could reuse your noise precomp as a Layer Map for the rotation of the particles. You could set the particles to be flat initially, then use your noise layer to rock them back and forth with the waves.
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Hi,
Be careful when animating the frequency parameter as it can lead to unexpectedly jerky results.
Dan Ebberts explains why in this thread:
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/227/11111
… and suggests a solution in this one:
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/227/15761 -
Hi,
I don’t think you should consider tutorials as ‘spying’ – they’re a good way to learn new techniques. I’ve been using AE for a good number of years now (since v3.1) and still regularly see tutorials about using an existing plug-in in a new way, or a new function of AE that I haven’t played with yet. One of the things I like most about AE is that there’s always something new to learn, or new ways to use something you know already.
As long as you don’t slavishly copy the tutorials, but use them as a starting point for something new – use your own footage, or a different type of footage to whatever was used in the tutorial, or just tweak the effect parameters to see what they all do – I consider that learning and not cheating. Tutorials can also be great time-savers when it comes to learning – not all effects have intuitive settings that you can get to grips with just by playing with them and, in that case, a quick pointer in a tutorial can save you hours of frustrating experimentation and get you to the ‘ah-ha!’ moment a lot quicker.
I see Dave LaRonde recommends a book by Chris and Trish Meyer. Years ago, I bought one of theirs called ‘AE in Production’ which uses concrete examples of production projects to demonstrate different AE techniques – I learned a lot from that.
Matthew
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Hi,
I think you’re right that, unless you have an immediate need for a particular plug-in, it’s well worth hanging on for a sale. Some of the plug-in resellers seem to have specials on a fairly regular basis, and it’s always nice to pick something up at 40% off!
On a personal note, if I had to choose, the Trapcode suite is the one you’d have a hard job prying out of my hands. I seem to find a use for one of the plug-ins in pretty much every projects – 3D stroke for animated swooshes in an abstract background, Particular for flying through a 3D ‘star field’ of photos, Form for animated grids used as alpha transitions, a little bit of Shine (keep it subtle!) to make things glow nicely, and Starglow for when the client doesn’t want subtle!
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I obviously typed that way too fast! It was meant to read:
“when a tracked 24fps sequence was nested in a 25fps sequence” -
I think Ben is on the right track with this. I’ve had problems in the past with motion tracking going awry when the tracked 25fps sequence was nested in a 25fos sequence – AE interpolates the movement and things don’t line up. However, in your precomp composition settings, there is an option to ‘preserve frame rate when nested’ (I forget the exact wording) which might sort out your problem more quickly than redoing your keyframes.
Mat
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Hi,
Depending on how realistic you need this to look, there are a couple of methods I can think of.
I did something similar recently using Trapcode Form, with a grid of sphere particles and a precomp driving the opacity and colour values for the particles. As this was part of the background of a fast-moving animation, I didn’t worry to much about making it very realistic, but it looked pretty good.
An other method I’ve seen is to use a grid of lights, and then use expressions to sample the precomp with the content for the light wall to drive the colour and luminosity of the lights. It looks great, but the number of lights can slow even powerful machines to a crawl! There’s a really detailed tutorial here:
https://qubahq.com/2010/08/tutorialpreset-light-wall/Mat
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Or maybe turbulent noise (with evolution off, so it doesn’t animate) to get a rough texture, and using it as a luma matte (while animating the brightness), or with the Gradient Wipe effect to get a splotchy transition?