Motion Graphics

Circles, Lines, and Stuff

Tricks for making something out of nothing with circles, lines,
waveforms, grids, and other stuff.
Download the project files:
meyer0300.sea 326K
meyer0300.zip 326K

Adding animated layers of circles, lines,

waveforms, and other stuff enliven a still image
from the Digital Vision Data:Funk library.

by Trish and Chris Meyer

We're sure this has never happened to you: Your clients have no budget, no sources, and
no ideas-but they want a cool animated background and the deadline is tomorrow. If that
sounds familiar, this month's project is for you. Using one background image and
plug-ins that ship with the standard version of After Effects 4.1, we'll create an animation
with just stuff (an umbrella term for graphical elements like circles, lines, waveforms,
etc.). Consult the After Effects Online Help for details on each effect discussed, and
install the free Cult Effects plug-ins from Cycore included on the 4.1 CD. The project file
and sources can be downloaded from the Reader's Corner at www.dv.com. Reverse
engineer the project by checking each layer from the bottom up; select a layer and hit the
U key to view the animated parameters.

Funky backgrounds
Needless to say, it's important to start with a cool background image to build on. For our
project, we used a strong yellow-red image (see Figure 1) from the Data:Funk CD from
Digital Vision (www.digitalvisiononline.com; DV#206). Also check out Velocity plus
Naked and Scared from their Contexture series. Some images on the Data:Funk CD are
already full of circles, lines, grids, and other stuff, which are crying out for motion. So
rather than use a busy image, we searched for a simple image to serve as a base and built
our own animated stuff on top. The busier images still provide inspiration, and many of
the textures used are included as individual images.
 Figure 1-Starting with a cool base image always
helps, particularly if it has depth and a strong
design feature for radiating circles.

Circles
Until recently, there was no easy way to create an animated circle that maintained the
same width throughout. You could animate a circle created in Illustrator, for instance, but
scaling would affect the thickness. The Ellipse effect (from the Render submenu)
included with After Effects 4.x creates animated circles while maintaining a consistent
thickness. In the online project, the soft yellow circles use the Color Dodge transfer mode
to recede into the background.
Another way to create circles is with a combination of a Mask and the Stroke effect.
Create a New Solid, draw an oval Mask in the Layer window, and add the Shift key to
constrain the aspect ratio to a circle. Apply the Stroke effect (Render submenu) and set
the Path pop-up to the Mask. This is how we created the Rotating Circle layer. The
Stroke's End parame-ter animates from zero to 100 percent, which draws the circle over
time as the layer rotates.

Lines
The Stroke effect can be used on any Mask shape, including an open path. The online
project includes four Dotted Line layers, which are simple Mask paths with an animated
Stroke effect. The Spacing parameter controls whether the line is solid or dotted. (Tip:
The Stroke effect is also great for tracing map routes.) Experiment with transfer modes to
blend elements with the background. The Dotted Lines use Color Dodge, but Add,
Screen, Overlay, Soft Light, and Hard Light often work well too-there are no
hard-and-fast rules.
The background also includes random lines created with the Block Dissolve transition
(see Figure 2). The effect is applied in a precomp to a white solid and animated using
The Wiggler. It's a bit of a kludge, but it works in a pinch. When nested in the final comp,
an inverted mask with a feathered edge is used to knock out the center so the lines won't
overlap the Circle layers.

Figure 2-Don't stereotype effects. For example,

these randomized lines were created with the Block
Dissolve transition effect.
Rectangles
If you need a round-edged rectangle, create it in Illustrator, copy it, and paste it to the
Layer window as a Mask for the Stroke effect to use. However, putting multiple shapes
on one layer might be better handled in Illustrator because the Stroke effect can only use
one mask at a time. Our Rectangle's layer is a row of outlined boxes saved from
Illustrator. To break up the regularity, the Rectangles use the CE_Turb_standard layer
above as a matte.

Turbulence ahead
Free on the 4.1 CD are three plug-ins from Cult Effects (www.culteffects.com), including
CE Noise Turbulent-its parameters are discussed in the PDF user guide. The Evolution
parameter makes it animate, and the Repeat checkbox (under Options) will force it to
loop every nth evolution. Our example stretches the fractal 1500 percent height-wise,
which is used as a matte for a white solid. This is nested in the final comp and
composited in Add mode. An animated Mask limits the glowing effect to the center area.
A second Noise Turbulent precomp uses the Standard preset fractal for a soft swirl effect.
This is composited in Overlay mode to add a little movement to the background. This
looked great on the red texture, but masks are used to block the effect from the corners
and center.
When creating Masks on layers that had to relate to the background, we created the
masks in the Layer window for the background image. The masks can then be copied to
other layers. Set any closed masks in the back-ground layer to None so they don't create
transparency.

Audio Spectrum
The Audio Spectrum effect creates a display like the ones you see on some stereos, where
different bars jump depending on the strength of the audio signal in different frequency
ranges. The Audio Waveform effect is similar, except the display is based on the actual
pattern of vibrations in the sound wave. The project includes a few example comps.
These effects are a lot of fun to experiment with. A few tips:
Audio Spectrum and Waveform are visual effects. You apply them to a full frame New
Solid (not an audio track) and set the Audio Layer pop-up to point at a layer with audio.
You can replace our project's audio track with your own, but if your audio is quite
different, you may need to edit some controls to achieve the same visual effect.
These effects look very different at Best quality than at Draft, so set the render quality for
the layer before adjusting parameters.
These effects can also be applied to a mask shape-try music notes, spirals, or even
outlines pasted from Illustrator.
The nature of sound is that lower frequencies tend to have a lot more energy or amplitude
in them than higher frequencies. Consider pre-composing the audio track in ques-tion and
applying an audio filter to preprocess the audio and boost its highs. You can always use a
processed or dummy audio layer to drive the effect while the original audio track is used
for final output.
In our project, we used Audio Spectrum in white as a luma matte for the background
image rotated 90 degrees. We nested this in the final comp and added a Drop Shadow
effect.
Third-party stuff
Obviously, all effects are useful for further manipulation. The following third-party
plug-ins specifically create graphical elements:
Cult Effects (http://www.culteffects.com/; DV#207): Cell Pattern, Grid,
Circle (easier than Ellipse).
Delirium (http://www.digieffects.com/; DV#208): Schematic Grid (animated
circuits), Nexus, HyperHarmonizer and VisualHarmonizer (graph-ical
synthesizers).
Evolution (http://www.atomicpower.com/; DV#209): Radio Shape, Radio
Star, Radio Waves (animated circles on steroids), Turbulator, Vegas.
ImageLounge (http://www.puffindesigns.com/; DV#210): Framer
(easy-to-edit box), plus fractal and turbulent effects.
We haven't even touched on the myriad particle systems out there, but they are also
wonderful for creating more stuff.