[Rutger]

Oopps…

Yes I noticed the mistake, thanks for the catch.

Rutger

[Rutger]

Echo,

1.5+1.5*Math.sin(Math.PI*time)

the first 1.5 represents the average value, the 2nd 1.5 is the amplitude since 1.5+1.5=3 and 1.5-1.5 = 0 so it should oscillate between 0 and 3.

if you don’t like the frequency which is 1 cycle per second, say you wanted 10 cycles per second, just change it to:

1.5+1.5*Math.sin(Math.PI*10*time)

That’s all

Rutger

[Rutger]

Hello Lars,

Interesting idea. I would probably not use CC sphere for the position of the lights. Although it is very powerful, I have learned the hard way that when it comes to a rotating object, that CC sphere shows some unrealistic behavior. (see my Billiard pool ball question posted earlier). But, I would use it to render the earth itself obviously.

I have never done a sphere with lights, but…I have done a very similar excercise where I had 30 or so lights in a circle pointing at a moving text in 3D. If you create a composition and add a spotlightlight. Then you create a null (named “Light Controls”) with a slider control named “Number of Lights” and a second control “Radius”. You can give in the following expression for position of the light (you may have to tweak it a bit):

x=272+thisComp.layer(“Light Controls”).effect(“Radius”)(“Slider”)*Math.sin(Math.PI*2*index/thisComp.layer(“Light Controls”).effect(“Number of Lights”)(“Slider”));
z=-500+thisComp.layer(“Light Controls”).effect(“Radius”)(“Slider”)*Math.cos(Math.PI*2*index/thisComp.layer(“Light Controls”).effect(“Number of Lights”)(“Slider”));
y= thisComp.height/2;
[x,y,z]

create a second null “Light Point of Interest” and give in the following expression for Point of interest for the light:
thisComp.layer(“Light Point of Interest”).transform.position

Now copy the light 30 (or n) times. You should see a circle of light after you apply Lux to the Composition.

Now to create a rotating circle you should probably create a 3rd null that is at the center of the circle and parent all the lights to this null, then you can simply rotate the entire circle by rotating the null.

Now you should be able to remove some of the lights (and replace them with nulls to keep the index count the same).

Now, I have not turned this into a sphere yet, for that I would probably adapt the following post by oscarus on http://www.aenhancers.com https://www.aenhancers.com/viewtopic.php?t=160&highlight=sphere

Not sure if it will work, but that’s how I would go about it. I hope this helps.

Rutger

[Rutger]

Thanks Dan,

point of interest works now as well.

Rutger

[Rutger]

I think there is a fairly easy method as follows:

– Create a starry sky using the same method Andrew Kramer used in his Earth tutorial. This means adding a solid and using Fractal noise. I used the following settings:
Fractal Type Dynamic, Noise Type Soft Linear, contrast = 600
, brightness = -280. Now, you should see stars on a black background.
– Turn this layer to be 3D
– Animate it such that it moves towards the camera in z-direction only.
– Precomp this (Ctrl-shift-C), move all attributes
– Then apply the Echo Effect to the precomp
– keyframe the number of echos, starting at 0 to about 250
– Add glow and use toner as you like.

All it needs is a little sound effect and you should be done.

Hope this helps

Rutger

[Rutger]

Maybe this is obvious, but I think the key to make this look convincing is that you use the drop that you are making as a displacement map for the animation behind it. I am assuming that you really don’t want to see the raindrop on the lens, but rather the distortion it gives of the city behind it. I saw it once in an animation where a camera started underwater and rose out of the waters showing an island or something like that. You could not actually see that the camera was wet, but the distortion of the image made this very clear, I thought it looked cool at least….

So all I would say is that you still need a convincing looking animation of a droplet running down the lens in grayscale. Then I would make the layer invisible, select your 3D city layer, then use effect>distort>displacement map and use your droplet layer as the displacement map. Then select lightness or so for horizontal and vertical displacement.

Again, I hope this was not obvious already.

Rutger

[Rutger]

Rafael,

I tried the two versions that yikesmikes suggested and both work fine for me, I get values of 46,50,54,58 etc. so there must be a small error somewhere.

Also, I don’t understand what you mean by “but that doesn’t match the ‘transition Completion’ to be where it should because percentage doesn’t match position increase.”. In my opinion the expression that we are using defines the transition completion value so it should “match” by definition. Or do you mean that it does not match the Audio Amplitude?

Rutger

[Rutger]

Rafael,

I am not exactly sure that I understand the question. I mean you want the result to be multiple discrete values in an array? or in time?

I am assuming that you want a propery (e.g. scale) to change from 0 to 100 at discrete steps in time. I am not sure if this is what you mean, but maybe this will give you some ideas.

Create a solid and apply the following expression to the scale value. If you change the step value, it changes the interval. Notice how the scale changes abruptly in time

totaltime = thisComp.duration;
step = 10;
counter = Math.floor(step*time/totaltime);
scaleval=100*(counter+1)/(step);
[scaleval,scaleval]

Hopefully it helps, I think the Math.floor function is what you are looking for, since it will create “jumps” in time, rather than smooth transitions.

Rutger

[Rutger]

Hello,

There is probably various ways of doing this, but I would do it as follows.

– make a new composition that is the same size as the image that you want to use underneath.
– Create a black background
– add a white solid and add a mask (Rounded Rectangle) to create one window, size it so that you see a white window on a black background.
– duplicate the mask several times and position them so that you see several windows in a grid. you should now see several white windows on a black bacjground.
– create three black banners that are the same height as one of the windows and as wide as the overall composition.
– now animate the position of the black banners one by one so that they start outside of the image and slide over your windows (turn motion blur on for nicer look).
– you essentially now have a animation of white windows disappearing over time.
– Use this comp in a new comp that has the image that you want to use. Position it on top of your image.
– Under trackmatte select “Luma Matte”

This should do the trick.

Good luck

Rutger

[Rutger]

Hello,

I think you can get pretty far with the CC Mr. Mercury effect. Requires quite a bit of tweaking though. A few tips:

– Set keyframes for birthrate to release a few blobs initially and then set it to zero.
– have the birth and death size set to the same value
– Set the influence map to “blob in” or “constant blobs”
– reduce the velocity to almost zero
– play with gravity to have the blobs go up and down (possibly have two or more layers to have up and down movement)
– reduce the ambient shading to get a nicer 3D effect
– Color it with your favorite color correction tool.

Just some ideas,

Rutger