[Mike Clasby]

This is different than Ayato (who am I to argue, that guy is great), each letter form fron a drop-rippling out.

This worked (I think its what you want). Use the letter (P in the sample below) as a contour in Radio Waves, the precomp and use that as the Displacement Map in the Displacement Map effects. Details below:

With the text tool I made a P (a large one) layer.

Render > Radio Wave
Move the Producer Point and ImageContour>Source Center until the ripples are concentric (and don’t overlap each other).

Stroke>FadeInTime and FadeOutTime – 0
Stroke- Start and End Width – your choice (I had the end bigger)

WaveMotion>Frequency,Lifespan – tweak these one after the others to get the ripples to die where you want them to. I had lifespan at .85, that gave me a full sizes “P” at 1 second (but this was only a test size 320×240 comp, so a larger comp will need different settings)

Stroke>Color – white

Now go down the timeline (to 1.5 sec for me) and change the fadeinTime to 0 (so the ripples stop a little after the keyframe), and change the fade in Time to something like 30 (so the ripple stop emitting from the center.

Now precomp the P layer.

Add you water graphic layer above and Effect>Distort>Displacement Map, with the “P” layer as the Displacement Map Layer.

Y might have to render out a frame (Comp>SaveFrameAs and sub it in for the P layer, or a hold keyframe I guess) to get teh P to freeze a full size.

Anyway you ccan get a ripple in any shape you want, as long as you can select it as a contour in Radio Waves.

It seems to me you’ll have to do it for each letter.

[Mike Clasby]

You can keyframe the Anchor Point, it’s under Transformations along with Position, Size, Opacity, etc. Is that what you mean?

[Mike Clasby]

Ask over at the Particle Illusion forumn.

https://www.creativecow.net/forum/view_posts.php?forumid=23

I’ve seen them make up several custom emiiters for folks with special needs. The new demo version is watermarked (time unlimited) but the “old” SE version is a full version (no limitations exeot it exppires in 30 days).

It’s also very easy to modify particles (makes-modify in Photoshop, import into PI).

It worth an ask.

[Mike Clasby]

These two Wondertouch tuts by Aharon Rabinowitz should help:

Getting Adobe After Effects position keys into particleIllusion

https://www.wondertouch.com/tutorials/aharon/AE_to_PI/AE_to_PI_keyframes.htm

Using particleIllusion with Adobe After Effects

https://www.wondertouch.com/tutorials/aharon/AE/Tut_AE_1.htm

[Mike Clasby]

If you are using PI 3 (I’m just testing SE, so I’m no expert) couldn’t you import as a background layer, an avi you’ve created with visual Cues, like a white dot appearing on the beat, or notes you want to sync PI particles with. Like in Premiere of FCP (easy in After Effects), drop a Photoshop dot in at the beat, assuming you can see the audiowave form). Then with that as a background, animate your particle in PI, then drop out you “Visual Cue” background before you render out in PI.

It should work if you can add and drop backgrounds in PI 3.

Or maybe it won’t work because I don’t know the program being new to it.

[Mike Clasby]

This is what will be so cool when PI has a plugin for After Effects. For any parameter that you are able to set a keyframe for in the PI plugin you will be able to tie it to changes in audio (the beat, etc) or any other changing property (that also has keyframes, like size of layer, the moving point as a stroke is revealed, etc), through expressions.

[Mike Clasby]

I believe the Editor’s Guild has the best AE tuts for newbies.

https://www.editorsguild.com/AfterEffects.html

It is straight forward and well explained and you will doing amazing things in 4 lessons only. Then the Cow tuts and others will make sense. Enjoy.

[Mike Clasby]

Thanks for the reply. Yeah, almost all effects are rasterized on output to Swf, except Audio Waveform and Audio Spectrum and Path Text.I’m looking forward to the PI AE fit. Thanks for keeping after it.

[Mike Clasby]

This for an old post might help. I couldn’t get search to give me the link, so here’s all of it:

Name: dina saleem
Date: Sep 21, 2004 at 1:37 am
Subject: z-depth matte

Hey there,

is there a possibility of applying a z-depth matte to a layer or a group of layers?
or is there a way of writing an expression, so that layers that respond to a null object loose transparency the further ‘z’ they move?

Reply To This Post
Post 2 of 3

Name: Filip Vandueren
Date: Sep 21, 2004 at 2:53 am
Subject: Re: z-depth matte

min_distance=100; // closer than this, opacity will be 100%
max_distance=10000; // from this distance, opacity will be 0%

n=this_comp.layer(“Null”); // name of your reference null (or the camera)
d=length(to_world(anchor_point), n.to_world(anchor_point));

ease(d, min_distance, max_distance, 100, 0)

Warning: this works in all dimensions, not just Z, so if your Null is quite far away from the camera, layers will also fade if they’re moving forward in Z, but away from the null. I would suggest putting the null close to the camera and increasing the min_distance

You could also apply a “Tint”-filter with both colors set to black, and copy this expression to “Amount”.
Change the last line to ease(d, min_distance, max_distance, 0, 100) This way, the layer will become black instead of transparant.

Reply To This Post View Parent Post

Post 3 of 3

Name: dina saleem
Date: Sep 21, 2004 at 6:20 am
Subject: Re: z-depth matte

allright…

that worked well…

I also tried out this expression:

( (thisComp.layer(“nullobject”).position.key(2)[2]-thisComp.layer(“nullobject”).position[2]) /
(thisComp.layer(“nullobject”).position.key(2)[2]-thisComp.layer(“nullobject”).position.key(1)[2])
) * 100

applied to the transparency of my layer, so it will fade between the two position keyframes I set on my null object….
in that way I could still edit my keyframes and the null could be positioned wherever I want it to…
(a friend of mine figured that out) 😉

[Mike Clasby]

This for an old post might help. I couldn’t get search to give me the link, so here’s all of it:

Name: dina saleem
Date: Sep 21, 2004 at 1:37 am
Subject: z-depth matte

Hey there,

is there a possibility of applying a z-depth matte to a layer or a group of layers?
or is there a way of writing an expression, so that layers that respond to a null object loose transparency the further ‘z’ they move?

Reply To This Post
Post 2 of 3

Name: Filip Vandueren
Date: Sep 21, 2004 at 2:53 am
Subject: Re: z-depth matte

min_distance=100; // closer than this, opacity will be 100%
max_distance=10000; // from this distance, opacity will be 0%

n=this_comp.layer(“Null”); // name of your reference null (or the camera)
d=length(to_world(anchor_point), n.to_world(anchor_point));

ease(d, min_distance, max_distance, 100, 0)

Warning: this works in all dimensions, not just Z, so if your Null is quite far away from the camera, layers will also fade if they’re moving forward in Z, but away from the null. I would suggest putting the null close to the camera and increasing the min_distance

You could also apply a “Tint”-filter with both colors set to black, and copy this expression to “Amount”.
Change the last line to ease(d, min_distance, max_distance, 0, 100) This way, the layer will become black instead of transparant.

Reply To This Post View Parent Post

Post 3 of 3

Name: dina saleem
Date: Sep 21, 2004 at 6:20 am
Subject: Re: z-depth matte

allright…

that worked well…

I also tried out this expression:

( (thisComp.layer(“nullobject”).position.key(2)[2]-thisComp.layer(“nullobject”).position[2]) /
(thisComp.layer(“nullobject”).position.key(2)[2]-thisComp.layer(“nullobject”).position.key(1)[2])
) * 100

applied to the transparency of my layer, so it will fade between the two position keyframes I set on my null object….
in that way I could still edit my keyframes and the null could be positioned wherever I want it to…
(a friend of mine figured that out) 😉