The Brush Strokes Effect

The Brush Strokes effect attempts to create a painted look from footage. It gives you a lot of control over the brush strokes used to create the final result. This effect also creates strokes that auto-animate.

To experiment with this effect, import the KS103.mov file from the Artbeats folder in the Media folder of the exercise files.

Apply the Brush Strokes effect to this footage. The results instantly change, and previewing this footage will see that these brush strokes auto-animate. The results here remind me a little of the Scribble effect we covered in Chapter 9.

The first thing I’m going to do is increase the Brush Size value to 5, which is its maximum value. Although this setting is usually too high, as it loses a great detail from our original footage, it will make it more obvious in the upcoming screenshots when we make changes to other properties.

Let’s also increase the Stroke Length value to 15 to make the brush strokes that create this image a little longer.

These settings are pretty ridiculous, but we’re using them so that we can see what’s going on here. In your own projects, you will probably want values that are more subtle. Now that the strokes that are creating this image are a little more obvious,

we can see the results of adjusting other properties. Take Stroke Angle value, for instance. This controls the directions of the brush strokes. Taking this value to 270 degrees creates the appearance that the brush strokes were created by dragging the brush from left to right.

By default, when this effect applies paint strokes, it applies them on top of the original layer. Change this by going to the Paint Surface drop down and selecting Paint On Transparent. This will remove the background from the paint strokes. To see

the difference here, reduce the Stroke Density value to 0, so that the paint strokes are more spread out. This allows the transparency beneath to show through.

I have one last trick for you with this effect. Believe it or not, we’re going to use this cute little video clip of girls running and playing on a sunny day to make a wall of animated lights, like something you might see on a control panel in a science fiction movie. First, decrease the Stroke Randomness value all the way to 0. Take the Stroke Length value to 1. This creates a

series of dots, instead of long strokes. Because these strokes auto-animate, they all appear to randomly flicker.

And, because I’m not one to leave well enough alone, I’m going to apply the Hue/Saturation effect to adjust the hue and reduce the lightness. Then I’ll apply the Glow effect (covered later in this chapter) to add to the illusion that these dots are lights. Play back the footage for even more sweet sci-fi action. It’s hard to believe that this result started off with two little girls running in a field.

The Cartoon Effect

Introduced in After Effects CS4, the Cartoon effect creates a stylized look that is intended to resemble vector art. A few years ago, a few commercials for the financial company Charles Schwab showed real video of interviews, but it had a cartoonish look to it. Full length movies like A Scanner Darkly and Waking Life have also taken advantage of such looks. The Cartoon effect attempts to stylize footage in the same way. Also, because of the way that the Cartoon effect simplifies and smoothes footage, you can also use it to try and get rid of video noise and other small blemishes.

Open the Cartoon.aep project from the Chapter 16 folder of the exercise files. This project contains two comps—Cartoon Start, and Cartoon Final. First, let’s start with the Cartoon Start comp. This comp contains some footage of Paavo jumping around on his unicycle onto a bench.

Apply the Cartoon effect to this footage. In my opinion the default results don’t really encourage me to use this effect. At first glance it appears that the Cartoon effect applies a really bad Photoshop filter effect to our footage; something that might have been popular in the mid-1990s when most people didn’t have computers.

The Cartoon effect has two main components: Fill and Edge. For the Fill side of things, the Cartoon effect looks at areas of color and tries to make them cartoony by averaging their values to create areas of flat color. The Edge aspect looks for the edges in the image to overlay them with black outlines, like a cartoon. From the Render drop down at the top of the effect in the Effect Controls panel, you can select to view Fill & Edges, or just Fill, or just Edges. Even if Fill & Edges is your desired end result, you may want to isolate just the fill or just the edges to get a clearer picture of what is going on with them. For now, we’ll leave this setting set to Fill & Edges.

Beneath the Render drop down, we have two detail settings— Detail Radius and Detail Threshold. These properties affect the entire image. The good news is that these properties are essentially the Bilateral Blur effect that we learned about in Chapter 4. The bad news is that soft, fuzzy blurs like the kind we find in the Bilateral Blur effect, aren’t really very cartoony. Like Bilateral Blur, the Radius value determines the amount of blur, and the

Threshold value determines how the effect defines an edge. A lower Threshold value keeps more details, while a higher Threshold value simplifies and smoothes areas of colors more.

In the Fill area, you can do a lot to create a cartoon look quickly. This is my favorite area of the effect. Reduce Shading Steps to posterize the image more, creating more flat areas of color. Decrease Shading Smoothness to create even harder lines between colors. Figure 16.13 shows and example with the two values in the Fill area significantly reduced. The cement path looks especially cartoonish.

In the Edge area, increase the Threshold property to increase the amount of edges that are covered in an outline. You can also adjust its width, softness, and opacity. Fine tune edges with the properties in the Advanced area.

I have a love/hate relationship with the Cartoon effect. I love the way that vector art looks (and, by implication, what the Cartoon effect is trying to do), but I really have a tough time getting the Cartoon effect to look even half way decent. The Cartoon Final comp contains my best attempt at an actual cartoon look.

First, I started with some video footage of Mt. Rainier.

I then added the Levels effect to help bring out contrast, so that the Cartoon effect would have an easier time detecting edges.

Next I applied the Cartoon effect. My settings are found with the result in Figure 16.17.

Finally, I added the Color Balance effect to bring out some blues in the darker tones, and warm tones in the highlights. Also, I’m kind of addicted to Color Balance, so much so that my wife is jealous.

The Color Emboss Effect

The Color Emboss effect is basically a simplistic version of the Bevel and Emboss layer style, except that it actually examines the entire layer instead of just the outside edge. As we’ll see in the following example, this can be used to bring out details in the highlights of an image.

Open the Emboss.aep project from the Chapter 16 folder of the exercise files. This contains a beautiful vector dragon created by Yo Gabba Gabba artist/animator Will Kindrick, who has supplied much of the medieval art we’ll be using in this chapter. Thanks, Will.

Apply the Color Emboss effect to the dragon. Instantly, you can see the added highlights and shadows that create the illusion of depth. The results are obvious, but to make them more pronounced, I’m going to increase the Relief value to 1.5, and the Contrast value to 150. The Relief value somewhat determines how deep the embossing is. Be careful that you don’t take this too high, because the highlights and shadows in the embossing will begin to appear to float away. The Contrast property will brighten the emboss highlights and darken the emboss shadows to make the effect more pronounced (or less so, if you reduce it).

Now that we see the embossed results, we can change the Direction value to adjust the angle of the simulated light that is creating this emboss effect. By default the light is coming up from the bottom left towards the upper right. Change the Direction value to −90 to change the light to come from the right side of the layer, pointing to the left. The effect is especially noticeable in the inside details of the wings (which, by the way, would not be changed at all by the Bevel and Emboss layer style in After Effects).

The Emboss Effect

The Emboss effect is just like the Color Emboss effect, but it only returns grayscale results. To get this result to have color, you’ll need to add it to the top copy of a layer’s duplicate, and then blend using one of the overlay blend modes (e.g., Overlay, Soft Light, Pin Light, etc.). The settings in the Emboss effect are exactly the same as those in the Color Emboss effect.

The Find Edges Effect

The Find Edges effect only creates these weird (dare I say ugly?) patterns by exaggerating edges, and brightening and fading nonedge pixels. This is not an effect that you should approach without your creative hat on. But used intelligently, can yield interesting results.

Import the video clip CJ121.mov from the Artbeats folder in the Media folder of the exercise files. This footage contains some sweet CG motion graphics.

Apply the Find Edges effect to this footage. It will be desecrated temporarily, but have faith. We shall overcome this visual vulgarity soon enough.

There really aren’t any settings here, other than Invert and Blend With Original. There isn’t a tolerance or threshold property to change the limits of what After Effects sees as an edge.

Okay, I think I’ve looked at this as long as I can stand. Duplicate this layer in the Timeline panel, the delete the Find Edges effect on the bottom copy. Select the layer copy on the top in the layer stack in the Timeline panel (the one with the Find Edges effect still applied), and change its layer blend mode to the Overlay blend mode. This removes the junk and blends the enhanced edges back into itself, creating a cool effect. The result is a little intense, so you may want to temper it by lowering the opacity of the top layer just a tad.

In this way, Find Edges can be really useful in working with footage that needs more contrast in its edges. But we can also use it for creative purposes when combined with other effects. We’re now going to create a quick massive video screen look using Find Edges. I’m going to delete (or turn off the visibility of) the top layer, leaving only the layer on bottom that doesn’t have the effect applied. Then apply the Mosaic effect to this layer. We’ll look at the Mosaic effect later in this chapter.

Next, apply the Find Edges effect to this layer. The Find Edges effect is finding (enhancing) the edges of the Mosaic effect.

Now all that’s left to do is to duplicate this layer, and remove the effects applied to the copy on the bottom. Then take the layer on top (the one with the effects) into the Multiply blend mode in the Timeline panel. This will remove the highlights in the Find Edges effect and darken the mosaic lines. This creates an organic grid like a large video screen, or a series of tiles.

The Glow Effect

The Glow effect is without question my favorite Stylize effect, and is one of my top five effects in all of After Effects. The Glow effect obviously adds a glow to a layer, but it’s not the same glow that you would find in Photoshop. The glow effects you find in Photoshop (and After Effects) layer styles create an outer or inner glow around a layer’s transparency. In contrast, the Glow effect creates contrast and brightens highlights and can even add blur to the glow to exaggerate it further. If you want to create effects with light or anything glowing, you will almost certainly want to try out the Glow effect.

Open the Glow.aep project from the Chapter 16 folder of the exercise files. This project contains 3 comps to help you master and appreciate the Glow effect. Let’s start in the Glow Start comp.

The Glow Start comp contains a render from the 3D application, 3DS Max. Renders from 3D applications have a tendency to look really dull and lifeless. This image is supposed to be glowing fiery lava, and instead it looks like a cheeseburger that got run over by a truck. Apply the Glow effect to the lava layer.

The results when the Glow effect is first applied probably look worse than what we started with. Let’s fix this. There are a lot of parameters in the Glow effect, but the 3 that I use most often by far are Glow Threshold, Glow Radius, and Glow Intensity. The Glow Threshold parameter specifies the tolerance for what brightness levels will glow. Take the Glow Threshold value down to 28% to apply glow to more of the areas with lava in this image.

Now, the areas we want to have glow are glowing, but the glow is too concentrated. The Glow Radius value determines the radius of the blur around the glowing areas. Increasing this value can make the glow dissipate a little, while still keeping the lava glowing. I’m going to increase the Glow Radius value to 73.

This is looking better, but the glow is a little too intense. The glowing areas are creating a haze over the entire image, which is brightening our shadows in effect. That makes the glowing areas less potent and vibrant. We need to reduce the intensity of the glow, which we can do by decreasing the Glow Intensity value. The Glow Intensity value is very sensitive, often returning noticeably different results when adjusted even one-tenth in either direction. In this case I’m going to take down the Glow Intensity value to 0.5. That creates a glow that we can be proud of.

In Chapter 6, the chapter on the Color Correction effects, we looked at several different ways to colorize an object. Interestingly enough, the Glow effect is also another tool that we can use to colorize footage or patterns. Switch over to the More Glow composition. This comp contains a pattern I created with Fractal Noise and Radial Blur. It is still grayscale.

Apply the Glow effect to this texture. By default, when the Glow effect works its magic, it does so by glowing the original colors of the layer. Thus, in the case here, the Glow effect just creates a white glow. The first step in creating a colored glow is to change the Glow Colors drop down from Original Colors to A & B Colors. What are A & B Colors you ask? They are the colors in the Color A and Color B values at the bottom of the effect in the Effect Controls panel. These colors create a gradient, which is then used as the glow colors.

I’m going to change my Color A value to a bright pink (with an RGB value of 248, 52, 255), and the Color B value to a bluish color (43, 116, 226).

Usually, when changing the Glow Colors value from Original Colors to A & B Colors, the glow results change dramatically. To get a better looks with the A & B colors, I lowered Glow Threshold to 10%, increased Glow Radius to 55, and reduced Glow Intensity to 0.8. This produces a colorized result that is pretty impressive.

To see one other example, click on the Glow Final comp tab in the Timeline panel. This contains another grayscale texture created with a series of strokes made with the Vegas effect (discussed in Chapter 9) and the Directional Blur effect (discussed in Chapter 4).

Since this texture was created using 4 layers together, I created an adjustment layer above the 4 layers, then applied the Glow effect to the adjustment layer to affect the entire composition simultaneously. Turn on the visibility of the adjustment layer to see the results I created with the Glow effect, using the techniques we’ve looked at.

If you’re interested in seeing the settings I used here, you can see them in Figure 16.39. You’ll notice in this figure that I’ve also tweaked the Color Phase and A & B Midpoint values. These determine how the A & B colors are balanced, in case you want more of one of the two colors in your image.

The Mosaic Effect

The Mosaic effect turns your footage into a series of shaded rectangles, based on the colors of your footage. It can be used to turn detailed footage into a generic background, or for obscuring details, as we’ll see in the upcoming examples.

Open the Mosaic.aep project from the Chapter 16 folder of the exercise files. This project contains two comps, which we’ll use for two different purposes with the Mosaic effect. First, we’ll start in the Dragon Fight comp.

Apply the Mosaic effect to this footage. As you can see, it uses the original colors of the layer to create a grid of rectangles with flat color.

Sometimes, the results are a little lackluster by default. We could apply an effect like Levels or Curves to increase the intensity of these colors. But the Mosaic effect has a built in option that increases the contrast and intensity of these colors without any additional help. Select the Sharp Colors option to intensify these colors.

The Mosaic effect can be great if you have copyrighted footage (or other footage that you don’t have permission to use), but you really like the color scheme. You can apply the Mosaic effect to completely obscure the details and reuse the color scheme, and no one is the wiser.

We can increase or decrease the resolution of the mosaic by adjusting the Horizontal Blocks and Vertical Blocks options. Look how cool the results are when we make the blocks three across

(by taking the Horizontal Blocks value to 3) and 20 high (by taking the Vertical Blocks value to 20).

Let’s now switch over to the Offensive Face comp. This comp contains some footage of me, duplicated once. On the top copy, I’ve isolated my face using a mask.

One of the more common uses of the Mosaic effect is to blur out details. You might have footage of someone being interviewed that doesn’t want their identity revealed, or you might not have permission to show someone in your video.

This technique is also used to obscure offensive, obscene, or trademarked elements in footage.

I have a face only a mother could love (and even that is questionable), so we’re going to use the Mosaic effect to make this footage less offensive. Turn on the visibility of the top copy of this layer, which already has the Mosaic effect applied and set up for you. Here, the Horizontal Blocks and Vertical Blocks values have been increased to 50 each. The higher the block numbers, the more resolution can be seen. We still want it to be clear that we are blocking out a face, so I used relatively high numbers for these values.

The Motion Tile Effect

The Motion Tile effect is just like the Offset effect, but it is far more powerful. It also allows you to repeat a layer multiple times, but gives you more control over the adjustment of those duplicates. Because of this extra control, the Motion Tile effect is great for patterns, or for creating a multitude of something.

Open the Motion Tile.aep project from the Chapter 16 folder of the exercise files. This simple project contains one comp with a tank I created in Illustrator. Apply the Motion Tile effect to this tank.

The Tile Center property at the top of the effect in the Effect Control panel is akin to the offset value. Taking the X dimension of the Tile Center value to 650 shows how this effect functions like the Offset effect. It allows you to create an apparently endless loop of your layer. If we animated this property high enough, we would create a large armada of tanks traveling in one direction.

The Tile Width and Tile Height values are a little misleading, but they’re also two of the more powerful properties in this effect. Think of these two values like scale values. And, with an effect like Motion Tile that repeats elements, making something smaller—in either dimension—will create more copies. Take both the Tile Width and Tile Height values to 20. This scales down the tanks, creating many more of them. Because the Tile Width and Tile Height values are the same, the tank scales down proportionately. If these values were different, it would create a non-uniform scale of our object.

The Output Width and Output Height values are essentially horizontal and vertical masks for this effect. If I reduce the Output Width value to 60, for example, then the left and right sides are cropped off. This is similar to duplicating the layer and applying a mask to it, but it saves you a step. Let’s say that you had a lower third or some other area in which your seamless patterns had to be confined. These output options would be quite handy.

Taking the Output Width value back to its default (100), I’m going to select the Mirror Edges option. This causes every other copy in both directions to flip. So, every other vertical copy flips vertically, and every other horizontal copy flips horizontally. You can now start to see the great power of this effect in generating repeating patterns, and its advantages over the Offset effect.

Perhaps my favorite parameter here is the Phase parameter. The Phase value shifts every other vertical line of copies, like in a casino gambling machine. You can shift every other horizontal line of copies by selecting the Horizontal Phase checkbox. In Figure 16.51, I left Horizontal Phase unchecked, and changed the Phase value to 180 degrees. Again we see the great versatility of this effect to create patterns and large numbers of objects from a single object.

The Posterize Effect

The Posterize effect reduces the numbers of colors in an image, which often creates hard transitions between colors. When I first started learning digital arts, this was usually a very bad thing. But in modern times, edgy lo-fi art is very popular. Often, art in this style is vector based, like the art created in Adobe Illustrator. In this example, we’re going to use the Posterize effect to help us create some trashy, urban, street style art with apparently flat color. For an even more dramatic effect, check out the Threshold effect at the end of this chapter.

Import the CED113.mov clip from the Artbeats folder in the Media folder of the exercise files. This clip contains a high quality aerial shot of a big city—perfect fodder for posterized, edgy graphics. I’m going to drag the Current Time Indicator out to 7 seconds and 14 frames (0;00;07;14).

Apply the Posterize effect. While the default results apply some degree of posterization, it’s not nearly enough. The default results remind me of bad web graphics from the late 1990s. So let’s adjust the Level value, which is the only parameter

in this effect. With the Posterize effect, high Level values create a smoother result, eventually making the posterized image resemble the original footage. Ironically, reducing the Level value actually increases the amount of posterization by reducing the number of colors used.

My only complaint with the Posterize effect is the way that the Level effect is set up. While the property only displays integer values, it actually is capable of recognizing fractions in the hundredths. So, values of 2.51 through 3.49, for example, get rounded off and displayed as 3. The value I’m looking for here is 3 exactly, so click and type in the number 3 for the Level value. Don’t scrub to this value, or you could achieve different results, not realizing that the value is not exactly on 3.

It’s important to note here that the Level value does not refer to the exact number of colors, per se. Although, you reduce the number of colors in the image by lowering the Level value, the Level value does not specifically refer to the total number of remaining colors.

We need to add one final step here. Apply the Tritone effect (discussed in Chapter 6) to this result, which will force all colors to become one of three colors. I used a pale yellow color for the Highlights value, a deep red for the Midtones value, and left the Shadows value at black. The results look like edgy Illustrator art that you might find on an urban poster.

The Roughen Edges Effect

If you’re currently unfamiliar with the Roughen Edges effect, it might possibly be the best thing that you get out of this book. The Roughen Edges effect, well … roughens edges. But this comes in handy so much, as we’ll see.

It’s important to realize what’s going on behind the scenes with this effect. It’s basically distorting the edges of a layer (or sometimes its contents, depending on your settings) by using a fractal pattern, similar to Fractal Noise (from Chapter 12). Because of this, the Roughen Edges effect has many important parameters (such as Complexity and Evolution) that are similar to Fractal Noise and other effects like it.

Open the Roughen Edges.aep project from the Chapter 16 folder of the exercise files. First we’ll start in the Roughen Edges comp, which contains some text on a shape layer.

Apply the Roughen Edges effect to the GINGIVITIS Outlines layer (the text). Instantly after applying the Roughen Edges effect, you can see the result on the text. The text already seems to have more life and character, even without changing any parameters or animating anything! This plain, boring font has been transformed into creepy text, befitting of a dreaded gum disease.

Increasing the Border value probably has the most significant results. The Border value determines how many pixels the roughened

edges get to dig into the layer. Even taking the Border value from 8 to 15 makes an extreme change.

At the very top of the effect in the Effect Controls panel, you’ll notice an Edge Type drop down. This specifies how the edges will be roughened. There are a lot of options here worth exploring. You can select Roughen Color, for example, which uses the Edge Color value as part of the roughening. This creates a realistic rust effect with the default color value. But you could

also use this to create fiery edges, or other results. All values in the Edge Type drop down that have the word color in their title (e.g., Rusty Color, Photocopy Color) use the Edge Color value in their results.

The Spiky edge type is another unique value. This can create ornate, spiky edges that be used for spiky, fiery, or electric edges.

Some of the edge types, such as Rusty and Photocopy, actually leave the edges perfectly intact, and instead erode the layer itself. Why these options are in an effect called Roughen Edges (and selectable in a parameter called Edge Type) is beyond me, but they’re really interesting, so I’m not complaining! The Rusty Color edge type is great for making objects look rusty and old. It actually eats away at the transparency of the layer. The Photocopy edge type creates random worn areas in the center of the layer, which creates the illusion of damage or wear.

Using a Border value of 3, the Photocopy edge type can create the illusion that our layer has only an outline, without a core.

The remaining properties are self-explanatory if you remember that these edges are being distorted with a fractal pattern. For example, the Scale property scales the noise pattern, creating tighter or larger edges. And, as with Fractal Noise and Cell Pattern, these edges can come alive with the Evolution parameter. You can also create the illusion that there is a force (like wind) acting on these edges by animating the Offset (Turbulence) parameter.

Now, let’s go over to the Dragon Fire FINAL comp. This comp contains some great Will Kindrick art that we’ve seen a few times in this book. The difference is here, that the fireball isn’t complete yet. I must confess that there was a time in my life when I was an Adobe Certified Instructor in After Effects, and yet I couldn’t make a decent fireball. How can this be, you ask? It was a dirty shameful secret that even my family didn’t know about. If I hadn’t found the answer in Roughen Edges, my wife probably would have left me for another After Effects trainer that knew how to make fireballs.

Figure 16.64 shows the Dragon Fire FINAL comp with the fire-ball in its original state. This fireball is created with a solid with the Fractal Noise effect applied. A simple mask is also applied to create the approximate fireball shape. The obvious problem here is that fireballs don’t have smooth edges.

At the lowest point in my life (when I couldn’t make a decent fireball), I tried to fake it by feathering the mask. There are several problems with this method. We’re colorizing this fire with the Colorama effect, which acts on the alpha channel after masks are applied. So, feathering the mask only makes a larger fireball because Colorama also colorizes the semitransparent pixels and makes them completely opaque. The results ain’t pretty.

I realize that we could fix this by precomposing the layer, then applying a mask with feather to the nested precomp. But even that doesn’t make a decent enough fireball to convince my wife to stay with me. We need something more here. We need the Roughen Edges effect. Apply it to the fireball layer, and take the Border value up to 50. That makes a fairly decent fireball right there. You can add more detail to the edges of the fireball by reducing the Scale property and/or by increasing the Complexity value.

To make the fireball shown in Figure 16.66, I set the Edge Type to Spiky, increased the Border value to 70, decreased Edge

Sharpness to 0.2, decreased Fractal Influence to 0.7, increased Scale to 180, and increased Complexity to 3. After seeing this fire, I also went back to Fractal Noise to reduce the Complexity to 3, to go more with my newfound sexy edges. I’ve also increased the zoom magnification to 200% to make my changes more visible.

The Scatter Effect

The Scatter effect breaks up layers into many tiny fragments. It’s definitely not a high end tool, but it can create quick and simple animations.

Open the Scatter.aep project in the Chapter 16 folder of the exercise files. This project contains the tank graphic we saw earlier in this chapter, but it also has a smooth yellow area created with a yellow solid layer with a mask applied to it.

Unless this tank is fighting an enemy that is allergic to banana pudding, this isn’t the most persuasive ammo to be shooting. Apply the Scatter effect to the yellow solid layer. Increase the Scatter Amount value to 150 to scatter the pixels of the layer. You can choose a dimension of the scatter in the Grain drop down (not sure why it’s called the Grain parameter). And if you want to have the scattered pixels of the layer flicker and animate, select the Randomize Every Frame checkbox at the bottom of the effect.

The Strobe Light Effect

The Strobe Light effect is another obscure effect that can actually come in handy in several ways. It creates a strobe effect by either flashing a color on the layer, or by making it transparent. It will be a little challenging demonstrating in print, so I heartily recommend following along with the project in the exercise files.

Open the Strobe Light.aep project from the Chapter 16 folder. This project contains two comps—Strobe Light Start, and Strobe of Lightning. We’ll start in Strobe Light Start. This comp contains a simple red solid, just so you can see the results of the Strobe Light effect.

Apply the Strobe Light effect to the red solid square. The results aren’t obvious until you preview the composition, at which point you’ll see that the Strobe Light effect is creating a white flash on the layer. The Strobe Light effect has a number of parameters you can change, including the color of the strobe, its duration, frequency, and more.

One of the best aspects of this effect is the Strobe drop down. By default, it is set to Operates on Color Only. This creates a flash of color on the layer. I don’t find this option all that useful, frankly. Perhaps it can be beneficial for creating twinkling lights or something of that nature.

However, the effect becomes much more helpful when the Strobe drop down is changed to Makes Layer Transparent. This can make layers flash on and off. The benefit of this will be readily seen as we go over to the Strobe of Lightning comp. This contains an animated instance of the Advanced Lightning effect.

The Strobe Light effect has already been applied for you in this comp, with the Strobe value set to Makes Layer Transparent. This turns several seconds of continuous lightning into several lightning strikes. This is the quickest way that I’ve found to create a flashing layer. You could even apply a wiggle expression to the Strobe Period value to create more random timing in the strobes.

The Texturize Effect

The Texturize effect would probably be more descriptive if it were called the Watermark effect, because that’s essentially what it does. It takes one layer, and makes a transparent version of it applied to a layer. You can use it to create a logo “bug” (the little station identifier at the bottom right hand corner of the screen that constantly and annoyingly reminds you what station you’re watching). Or, you can use it to create a protective, and yet non-obstructive mark on footage to prevent others from using it professionally.

Open the Texturize.aep project from the Chapter 16 folder of the exercise files. This project contains a comp with some video footage of Seattle with loads of effects applied (some from this chapter, some from Chapter 6), and it also contains a vector logo.

The first thing to do is to turn off the visibility of the logo layer (Static Logo for AE). This is the texture we’re going to apply to the Seattle footage, and we don’t actually want to see this layer. Apply the Texturize effect to the seattle.mov layer. In the Effect Controls panel, change the Texture Layer drop down to the logo layer. This creates a tiled arrangement of the semi-transparent version of the logo all across the Seattle footage.

You can change the Light Direction and the Texture Contrast with the properties of the same names. You can use these properties to make the texturized logo more pronounced, or less so. You can also change how the texture is placed in the footage using the Texture Placement drop down list. For instance, you can center the layer instead of tiling it.

If you were really using this effect to create a logo bug, you’d probably want to apply the Texturize effect to the logo, and use the footage as the texture. That way, you’d have control over where your logo is placed, as well as its size and other properties.

The Threshold Effect

The Threshold effect is another favorite from Photoshop. It does nothing more than convert every single pixel to pure white or pure black. This might seem pointless, but it does have a useful purpose, and an artistic one as well.

Open the Threshold.aep project from the Chapter 16 folder of the exercise files. This project contains two comps. We’re going to start in the simple comp, Threshold Start. This contains a simple gradient.

Apply the Threshold effect to this gradient. Every pixel will be turned pure white or pure black.

We can only change one property: Level. This setting determines the cutoff as to which pixels turn white, and which ones turn black. Increase this value to 200 to turn more pixels black. If you were to decrease this value, more pixels would be turned white. This effect is great for tweaking the grayscale maps that you might use to control effect properties.

Now let’s use the Threshold effect in a more practical scenario. Switch over to the Edgy Example comp.

Like we discussed earlier in this chapter with Posterize, sometimes damaged or grungy graphics are exactly what you’re looking for. Let’s say we want to create an intro for an edgy music video. This comp contains a grungy logo, and a sugary sweet video clip of Mt. Rainier. The colors and textures are not conducive to a music video like this, but it’s all we have available. No worries. Just apply the Threshold affect, and adjust to taste. This will instantly create the street cred we’re looking for.