Create an Ethereal Morphing Letter Canvas

Create an Ethereal Morphing Letter Canvas

on Nov 25th 2010 with 244 comments
Tutorial Details
  • Requirements: Just After Effects....enjoy!
  • Difficulty: Intermediate
  • Run Time: 35:23min

Final Product What You'll Be Creating

Twice a month we revisit some of our reader’s favorite posts from back in the archives of Aetuts+. Today we’ll look at an amazing post from Satya Meka. This was Satya’s first tutorial for Aetuts+ published in March 2009 and he’ll show how to generate an incredible result from a plug-in you would have never guessed. Let’s take a look…

Once in a while a new (or in this case very rarely used) technique appears on the scene and suddenly you start seeing it everywhere. Well we have a feeling that this is going to be one of those. In this tutorial Satya shows us how to use the built-in radio waves plug-in to create an incredibly beautiful and ethereal animation of morphing letters.

Tutorial

Download Tutorial .mp4

File size 586MB

 
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I am an aspiring Motion Designer influenced by Generative Art. I am always willing to work with interesting people and you can follow me on twitter @gutsblow.  

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  • http://avapglobal.com/Vikash/index.html Vikash Verma

    thx :)

  • bebold

    Great tutorial !
    Thank you for sharing your knowledge.

  • http://www.agenciarea.com manuel muñoz

    good tut man! one tip, if you add a vector blur u gonna have a great result…

  • Ricky

    How can I view the whole tutorial? I can only get up to maybe 11 minutes of it then it just stops.

  • http://esignsbyadam.com Achill

    does the video stop playing for anyone else after 10min?

  • nico

    how can i do this effect when i dont want to have my mask in one part? i dont want to have the letters that close to each other. so in this way it creates one mask for each letter.. how can i solve that problem?

    cheers!

  • RAJESH

    excellent animation,………………..

  • DamnIT

    Ah come on!!!!

    Whats with thgis Tutorial quiting after like 13 min????????

    Even the download is screwed!

  • http://anepitomenutritionist.blogspot.com/ James Lee

    The effect is superb, but the file size is WAY TOO HUGE. Mine was 30 seconds, and it took up 1 GB :( , probably has something to do with how I rendered it.

    • Slookz

      You probably used the Animation codec, which is the default. It’s heavy.

  • aditya

    great

  • tushar

    superb….

  • Rajesh Kumar Rawat

    wow….. Very Nice Tutorial >>>

    Thanks >>>>>>>>>>>

  • http://www.fishgraphics.eu Darek

    Nice tutorial, but the narration was horrible

    • Lean

      Agree, he sounds nervous.

  • rs

    Hello
    As soon as I apply radio waves it turns the background black? Is ther some setting I am missing here?

    • Yazzy

      Hey rs,
      I have the same problem :S i’ve tried everything but i can’t it fixed! Did you find out what’s wrong?

      • Darryl Santos

        his back ground is jst set as white….
        urs is default black..add a white layer as a background or change ur background to white if u feel necessary

  • Cindx

    Hey!

    Great tutorial, but way too long.

  • http://mihhhai.blogspot.com Mihai

    Dude, you’d better do coedy with that sort of narration :)) everything you say sounds like coming from a drunk guy that just woke up. But thank you for the idea, it’s cool :)

    • Nikita

      Why does everyone have to complain about the narration?
      He was audible and coherent enough for me to follow the tutorial to a tee, so I do not see what the problem is.

      • Luke McFadden

        Maybe the drunk comment was too much, but providing feedback on the narration seems fine. I kept skipping along as the narration was quite slow and seemed unfocused at times.

        This is a Tut site, so we want to help make the Tuts as best as possible, you can’t do that without a feedback loop.

  • hIREN sONI

    wow….. Very Nice Tutorial >>>

    Thanks >>>>>>>>>>>

  • http://pasesycortes.com Noticias NBA

    Looks good! How I missed this one???

  • http://www.llamaradadepetate.tv ihlo

    This is an old tutorial hmmm about 2 years I think but its a nice one

  • old man

    this is an old tutorial…

  • COOLZNS

    IS IT THE OLD TUT? I THINK I SAW IT ABOUT ONE YEAR AGO

    • http://www.vimeo.com/everettoptions Adam Everett Miller

      read the description

  • http://www.transistor.nu Tom Karlsson

    Great tut! Probably should have keept the light off until rendering or use a fake light effect/vignette to save rendertime during workprocess though :)

  • Nikolas

    Very Good Tut! Really helpfull and a very similar result than trapcode form plug-in,
    Good One!

  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OK3V72xkR4 tejinder singh

    awesome man…we can do lot of other thing with this kind of stuff …..we can use our image too and create grt effects

    :).

    this is what i made

  • Duder

    You ramble way too much man. You’re driving me mad. This is an awesome effects but scrubbing through the timeline to skip your blargghhing cause me to miss some key stuff. Condense your content.

  • http://mizmotion.com mizmotion

    I found effect very nice, but tut way too long.

    My tip is to combine slider for a wiggle with frequency with expression, so no need to keyframes there

  • Carrie

    I’m wondering what song was used for the example? Thanks for any help on this!

  • whatever

    everything was fine until you invented that wiggle thing. i went through 27 pages in google, no sign of anything in AE like wiggle. wegl

  • Sebastián

    Great!!!

    Thanks from Chile.

  • alan

    howcome when I create radio waves my background turns black???

  • LuckyBoy

    could somebody tell me please how to do what hes doing in 21:07 a little latter when a arrow appears pointing at slider effect, i don’t understand what he says or how he make it, and there are some things whe he talks about variable X, something, a symbol before the X that i don’t find in my keyboard. Its really urgent for me to know this about slider cause im in the middle of a project using this, and im on hold, so. PLEASE!!! explain me his actions.

  • Dan M

    WOW ! i must say the narration is awfull! Love the effect of this tutorial but dude what a bad narration and SLOW tutorial! Great effort though! just speed it up a little by editing the awkward parts of it and stay of the booze !

  • Axel

    The tutorial is great! But you should train up your english.

  • Tico21

    Don’t be a bunch of moronic whining babies. His English is PERFECTLY understandable. I’m sure he’s not from any native-English speaking country and is trying his best to share his tips and knowledge regardless of his English skills. Duh! I bet 50% of you can’t even spell things right in your own language but here you are, complaining about the most stupid things because “his English is bad”. Be gratefull, learn new stuff, say thanx and bug off.

  • Kai

    Nice tutorial. Have a problem though – i’m upto the part about adding the ramp effect as the background graphics, but for some reason i can’t change the colour of the start and end colours in the ramp property. It always stays as the default black and white, even as i’m dragging across the colour palette.

    I opened up an entirely new project, new comp, and i AM able to change the colour. But can anyone see where i might have gone wrong?

    Thanks!

  • Αnastasis

    1) Not understandable Εnglish. *
    2) This video could be less than 35 minutes (15 minutes). *
    3) Too much tiring.*
    4) Super idea . Congratulations on your work !!!!!!!!!

    *** A tutorial demands perfect Εnglish, especially fluency of the language as well as competency of communicating with the others .

  • Marcus

    Very disappointing tutorial. This could have been a great tutorial. Next time have a prepared script or have someone else narrate.

  • Ericg12

    superb….

  • WHY

    This is simple, but, when I click ‘producer point’ it doesn’t automatically let me type in the field to the right, on the graph, where you are typing ‘wiggle’

    How do you type in the graph on the right, are you pressing any other keys than the mouse on ‘producer point’

    Help~!

    • SQWATCH

      you must option/alt click on the producer point to open the expression field.

  • http://chilibean.biz/index.html chili bean paste bucket

    Thank you for sharing this beautiful effect. I am using it in a new animation of mine.

  • Michael

    Thanks for the nice tricks.

  • http://www.nzparkour.co.nz Ryan

    Awesome bro, elegant.

    33:09 – lol sorry we have a beautiful what now? :P

    Loving your tutorials bro

  • tehri

    some here criticized the narration or duration etc… first of all, learn S. Meka native language, and then come back, and do at least one full tutorial, using this language !
    If you knew really who is Satya Meka and his genius, you should just keep silence… and only say “thank you” !

    Wonderful tut’, master !! and thank’s a lot for what you create !… Plexus blows my mind !!!

    (°v°)

  • laura

    When I try to paste the letterform mask back in the original composition it won’t let me? Do I need the first rectangle mask like he had?

  • artisan

    thanks for the tutorial just the kind of effect I am looking for

  • Nita

    How much would you charge to create this very same effect or sell this to me with only two letters T.V. with a black background and red letters saved as an AVI so I can insert it into a film I’m making?

    • Dave

      Just do it yourself.. I don’t even know After Effects well and just got through it

  • J.R.

    The only problem with your method is if you are using a longer word it will apply more masks to the auto-trace.. Any work around for that?

  • https://vimeo.com/43448397 Nathalie Karouni

    Hey thanks a lot for you tutorial!!

    For some reason my letters don’t appear with the waves. In the second composition the morphing effect worked, but when I copy the comp to the main one it doesn’t work. Anyone knows why?
    I already checked many times if I missed any step but I don’t think so….

  • Nico M.

    Hi, I’m looking for a tutorial to create the world that a character-rig like this will be placed in. Plus, how to animate this character rig, Is there a tutorial out there? Thanks in advance.

  • http://www.online-nrw.de/ wiyono

    horrible tutorial

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