Simple AE Fractal Effects

by ditt0bx   | filed under Web, HTML, CSS, and XML

Ever seen those nifty, smooth animations done with After effects? Ever thought how hard can be to learn working with After effects? Well, if you take "baby steps" you will see that working with this amazing software is not as difficult as you might think and it can also turn out being fun and addictive

Here is an example of something that you can create in AE using this tutorial:

[ a sky effect created in AE ]

Sky

In this tutorial I'll show you some things that can be done easily, even if you open After Effects for the first time:

1. Create a new project with a new composition about 5 seconds long and about the size you want the sky to be. I created mine at 640 width/480 height.

2. Then insert a new solid layer and click on Make comp size to make it the same size as your composition. Then go to effect/noise/fractal noise
   and use these settings:

   • Fractal type: Basic

   • Noise type: Soft Linear

   • Invert- checked

   • Contrast: 354

   • Brightness: 10

   • Overflow: soft clamp
     Now go to Effects, Adjust, Hue Saturation, check colorize and move the sliders of the Hue, Saturation and contrast till you get the color you desire for the skies. Mine are:

   • Hue: 210

   • Saturation: 48

   • Lightness: 51

Now in the timeline go to the drop-down menu of effects to the Fractal Noise effect. Set a keyframe for evolution at frame 1 with the default value 0x0.0 and at the last frame set another key frame, making the value 1x0.0.

However if you want your clouds to move faster, you can set it to 2x0.0 etc.

Moving Waves

Now some variations to create other stuff. In the same composition, on The Fractal Noise effect change the following values:

• Fractal Type: Strings

• Noise type: Spline (uncheck the invert)

Now you have moving waves!

There are various other special effects you can create by experimenting with different settings! I hope this tutorial helped, and if you have any questions, feel free to post on the forums.

Regards!

Ditt0bx

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