Displacement Map / Ripple Effect

Larry Rutledge

Larry Rutledge

Fest Master
Is there any way to do a displacement map (I think that's the name) or something in order to create a "ripple" effect of the video/image on screen?

Basically the look I'm after is having the whole screen ripple from the middle out like when you toss a rock into a lake and the concentric rings ripple and spread out away from the center where the rock hit.

I'd like to use this overlayed on someone disappearing...but want the whole screen (not just the person) to be affected by the ripple.

I hope that makes sense. Thanks in advance for any assistance.

Peace,
Larry
 
Find some stock footage of a water ripple (ArtBeats has some) and place that on the track above the one you want to affect. Change the compositing mode of the upper track to Custom > Displacement Map. This will make the bottom track displace to the ripple footage. (I find sometimes the Height map works better than a displacement map but you can try both and see)

~jr
 
I tried that and it looks great. Had no idea you could do that.

Anybody know where there's a list of exactly what each compositing mode does?
 
Larry,

You can do the ripple effect in Vegas, exactly as you are wanting.

You will need your base clip to be affected, and a clip to be used as a displacement. The diplacement clip goes on top of the base, and then for the Blending mode, you choose Custom>Displacement Map.

Vegas doens't seem to allow for the use of Luminosity as a basis for displacement, but you still use the standard Red and Green channels by default.

You can use the use the Media generator to create displacements rather easily, and effect you apply to it (Blur, levels) affeft it nicely, and can be used to take a simple effect and alter it futher.

Your best bet is to create an effect which either has an alpha channel or has a 50% gray background (R127,G127,B127), which will not move the base clip when you apply it. You'll understand what I mean once you apply something.

You can also create a ring in Photoshop and animate it in Vegas as the displacement. Multiple animations offset will look like ripples.
 
steveandbelinda said:
Is there somewhere that I can get some footage of "water ripple" free, to try this effect?:dankk2:
Click to expand...



You can create one inside vegas. Make a .tga file of a ring, put a blur on it, and animate it growning. Call it ring expand, or ripple, or something.

Save that project and open a new one, then pull the animation project into the new one over and over, offsetting the projects down the timeline. Call it Rings Animation, Ripples Animation.

Save that, open a new project, put into your footage, and pull in the Rings Animation project on top and there she is.
 
Thanks for all the comments everyone...I've been so busy I haven't had a chance to try this yet, but I intend to in the next couple nights. I'll let you know how it goes.

Again, thanks for the great, detailed info :dankk2:
 
Larry, this:

http://www.paramm.com/Dis_Ring.zip


The zip folder contains a .png sequence, and a Vegas project file.

The bottom track is where you can place your video to see.

There is a gaussian blur on each instance of the .png sequence. If you want, remove the blur(s) and apply a blur to the whole track. It'll speed things up a tad.

Any effects you apply to the displacement track will affect it. Levels with a gamma tweak, more or less blur, saturation, all will affect the image sequence, which will then have a diffferent effect and look to the base footage.
 
Rapier, thanks for the project file... the look is cool.

one question, why green?

edit: and how did you create the .png sequence?
 
Last edited:
greg121 said:
Rapier, thanks for the project file... the look is cool.

one question, why green?

edit: and how did you create the .png sequence?
Click to expand...


Green becase Vegas uses Green and Red for their Displacement effect. That's quite common.


The .png sequence was done very quickly in Illusion 3. I recently bought it (i've been "evaluating" it for years), and I downloaded all the libraires of emitters. One was called Radar_04 and that was one of the partcles. I though immdieately of this thread when I saw it, so I rendered a few.
 
Awesome! Thanks :dankk2::dankk2:

I'll be trying this out tonight!!! :thumbsup:
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Larry R said:
Awesome! Thanks :dankk2::dankk2:

I'll be trying this out tonight!!! :thumbsup:
Click to expand...


your welcome.

When you see something in a project setting, and you are able to look at it layer by layer, it can realy turn on the lightbulb.
 
Thanks for the info. I too have PI3 and have seen that radar emitter but I would have never thought to use it this way. (well, because I didn't know how, but now I do - thanks!)

Greg
 
Illusion is worth the money for creating displacements maps, blur maps, and animted textures for 3D alone.

It does great stuff, and is a whole lot more, but that's my primary use for it.
 
I finally got a chance to download this to mess with it and guess what...it didn't work. Apparently you have the newer fangled version of Vegas and I'm still on version 5.

It's ok though, I imported the image sequence and started figuring out how to make the displacement map stuff work...the ring sequence helped a ton...thanks
 
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