Randomly Moving Vertical Lines
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For a while now, randomly moving vertical lines over a solid or an image has a popular, if not overused, background effect. I've seen it everywhere from ABC promos to a Thai commercial for a discount card for teens.
There is an easy way to do this (probably several ways) in After Effects, without tediously moving position and scale keyframes throughout your comp. It's pretty simple, so if you're a beginner, go ahead and give it a shot.
Note: In After Effects 7.0 there are templates and there is one that is very similar to this effect called Techno.aet.
Instructions
- Create
a new comp in AE. Mine is 320x240, 15 fps, 5 seconds long. I've named
mine "Fractal Noise 1".
- Create
a new layer by creating a new solid and make it the same size as your
comp. Apply the "Fractal Noise" filter. Effect > Render
> Fractal Noise. I
used the following settings:
- Fractal Type: Turbulent Basic
- Noise Type: Soft Linear
- Contrast:100
- Brightness: 0.0
- Overflow: Clip
- Complexity: 1.0
- Evolution : Keyframed, 0-30 at the first and last frames. The rest are left at the default settings. The idea here is to move everything really slowly. You will use the luminance levels to move your stripes in the steps ahead.
- Duplicate
your Fractal Noise 1 comp and rename the copy "Fractal Noise 2".
Open the layer with the Fractal noise effect. We want to change some
of the parameters. Instead of keyframing the evolution, I keyframed
the offset turbulence from 10.5, 10.5 at the first frame, to 0, 0 at
the last frame. I also checked the "invert" checkbox.
- Create
a new comp called "Lines". I've made mine 320x240, 5 seconds
long, with an orange background. Drag "Fractal Noise 1" and
"Fractal Noise 2" into your "lines" comp and turn
off their visibility (the eyeball box).
- Create
a new layer called "Yellow Lines", the same size as your comp.
Apply the Card Dance plug-in. Effect > Simulation > Card Dance.
I used the following settings:
- Rows:
1
- Columns: 30
- Back Layer: None
- Gradient Layer: Fractal Noise 2
- Transformation Order: Scale, Position, Rotate
- X Position Source: Intensity 1
- X Position Multiplier: 11.90
- X Scale Source: Intensity 1
- X Scale Multiplier: -1.60
- X Offset: 2.00 Everything else is left at the defaults.
- Now watch
it go! To speed it up or slow it down, adjust the speed of movement
in Fractal Noise 2.
- Duplicate
the "Yellow Lines" layer. Rename it "Orange Lines"
and make the solid color orange (layer > solid settings). Change
the transfer mode to "Add", and change the following parameters
of the card dance effect:
- Columns: 22
- Gradient Layer: Fractal Noise 2
- X Scale Source: Intensity V Slope 1
- Too many lines? Adjust the columns settings for both lines layers.
Did you know that you can create a line effect like this with Useful Things, a very Useful After Effects Plug-in?