How would you have done this?
by Paul Benson
on
Apr 28, 2009 at 3:31:47 am
So, I have the effect I want working, but I thought of a few possible ways of doing this, but wasn't sure if they would work. So, I'm just curious how others would have skinned this cat.
The effect:
I have a map of Hawaii with an animated fractal noise 'ocean'. I wanted some interference with the islands and the ocean, so I decided I wanted waves to be hitting the islands. This was very simplistic, in that the waves would just be concentric colors of gradated blues around the island. These 'rings' of color would be animated and travel in towards each island.
My process:
Using Photoshop, I created a pure black and white map (black where the islands are and white where the ocean is). I then selected an island and transformed it (holding alt and shift to keep it centered and ratioed). I then blurred the selection. I did this for each island. Finally I selected the pure white areas and made them transparent.
Bringing that picture into AE, I then used Colorama for the waves both for the color change and the animation.
I achieved pretty much what I was looking for.
I was wondering if I should have selected each island and then used the stroke command to expand the islands. I'm wondering if that may have worked better, as the transformation I used was not always perfect (especially for the elongated islands).
Re: How would you have done this? by david bogie on Apr 28, 2009 at 5:50:08 pm
WaveWorld, Caustics, Colorama.
Three incredibly misunderstood and underutilized filters.
The best information about WW and Caustics is available from TotalTraining; Brian Maffitt invented them back in the Olden Days.
I use WW and Caustics often and I can tell you this: Real waves and real caustics are really fast (go visit a pool and watch the light play on the bottom) but the simulations always looks fake because they move too fast. I spend hours and hours slowing these effects down so the audience thinks they're real.
