Hi,

A couple of months ago I was playing (for the first time) with the ripple effect in AE7 and used it to cause a road marking (actually a speed limit in a circle painted on the road) to appear to gently ripple out after a car passed over it.

It was only a quick experiment and I stupidly failed to save the project file.

I'm trying to recreate the effect with 'real' footage now, but for some inexplicable reason I cannot get the ripple to work in 3d space, only 2d. Obviously for the effect to work I need to align it to the road marking using x, y and z coordinates.

I feel very foolish (and it is relatively early on a Saturday morning so my brain hasn't kicked in yet!) but can anyone clue me in as to how to get the effect to work in 3d space please?

Thanks!

ian . . .

Hmm, just a thought . . . . I have a feeling I may have made the test on a clients pc. I'm beginning to wonder if it was a third party plugin that I used that I don't have access to here at home.

Does anyone know of a good third party ripple effect that works in 3d?

(I'd prefer it if I could get the AE7 plugin to work in 3d, of course!).

Cheers,

Ian . . .

Hope you won't object to a bump.

I've looked at the demos/web pages of a number of third party ripple effects (eg Boris, Tinderbox) and I haven't yet found one that operates in 3d.

Please someone tell me I didn't just dream it!

it was probably just the illusion of 3d cause it sat pretty with the footage.
that can happen sometimes with a lot of fooling around with the centering and size of the effect.
as far as i know effects can only be applied to 2d layers in 3d space, in other words if you pivot the layer it doesent protrude out. However the illusion of this can be created with ripples, rays etc. applied to a pre-composed layer.

Cheers Ger,

I just found out which effect I was using - it was WarpPuddle from Sapphire (GenArts). I had used the demo version at a clients site.

It has much greater control over parameters than the AE Ripple or BCC or CC's plugins, including a setting which (as you suggest) allows the impression of the ripple being pivoted to sit on a 3d plane. Doesn't look like any of the others have that feature - at least not as easy to use as Sapphire.

Thanks again.

Ian . . .

cool stuff ian,
just wondering if they have a lightrays in that range?

Certainly do.

EdgeRays and Rays are the two effects with the word 'rays' in the title! There are 19 different filters in the lighting category, as well as others that are light-related in other categories (eg Sparkles, Zap).

In all there are over 175 plug-ins, listed here : http://www.genarts.com/sapphire-ae.html

Not cheap though - $599 (US) for any of the four boxed sets (Lighting, Stylize, Adjust/Blur/Comp/Distort and Render/Time/Transitions) or $1699 the lot.

I would say that, for me anyway, well over half of them are frequently usable with the rest being once in a lifetime jobs.

Like I said, I have the demo but I do have access to a fully licenced copy on a regular clients pc so I can nip along with a USB drive and take advantage (out of hours, og course!).

Worth checking out their showreel - http://www.genarts.com/genarts-demoreel-qt-large.html (there's a smaller version as well).

Cheers.

Ian . . .

thanks for that. what a reel. who else would have such an array of cool shots to use in their reel other than a high end plug-ins company.

time to start saving. although i reckon a lot of what i saw there is very do-able with the standard effects by just being clever with them.

ian can the new aftereffects handle hd(v) footage? i dont think it can but im wondering is there a way to work around it. im making the changeover soon.

Yeah, it's a good reel! Pretty sure that all those shots are their customers' work rather than their own though.

AE works fine with HD as far as I am aware. I'm not an expert though - still with SD as none of my customers have asked for HD yet and I'm putting the moment off as long as I can to save my pennies!