How to Make Objects Ripple in Pool of Water in Adobe After Effects CC (Displace Tracking Tutorial)

 

INTRODUCTION 

Helo Viewers in this video i'm going to show you how to create this cool water displacement effect and some tips on how to make it smooth and also a more advanced example for when there's motion in the camera as well and how to track and attach your objects to that so why don't we begin with the easy example where we just have a clip of some water in a pool

TRANSFORM PROPERTIES

 this is just a top-down shot and the camera is not moving that's the important part so basically the only thing that's moving is the waves inside of the frame the first thing we're going to want to do is either add our text or shape or logo that we want to use so i'll just use the after effects logo for example it's a bit large here so i'll drop down the transform properties of that layer and i'll scale it down a bit just

DISPLACEMENT MAP 

 so we can see a little bit better what's going on and the first thing we're going to want to do is add a displacement map onto this logo layer so in the effects and presets panel we can search for displacement map that's in the distort video effects folder and i'll click and drag that onto the logo layer so first we have to choose the displacement map layer and we actually are going to create our own layer for this so what i'll do is i'll duplicate the original video clip layer that's this pool layer i'll press command c command v 

GAUSSIAN BLUR 

so we have another copy of that and what i'll do is go to gaussian blur in the effects panel i'll just search for that and i'll add that onto this copied layer that we have and then i'll increase the blurriness a good amount depends how how large the texture and the contrast of your clip is but i'll start with around 20 to 30. it might be different for your example so we've kind of blurred out the edges and contrast a bit this is going to help us and i'll show you how now i'll bring our logo back to visibility i'll highlight it and on the displacement map layer

BLURRED LAYER

 now we'll choose that layer 2 whatever we named it if we want to distinguish it but this is the blurred layer now we do have to make sure that we're using effects and masks here not just source so telling after effects to also take into consideration that gaussian blur that we added and then for the horizontal and vertical displacement channels we'll use something like luminance i suppose you could try blue or luminance or lightness in this case we just want after effects to recognize the contrast between those waves and we can increase the displacement amount from five all the way to however much we need for our clip

SMOOTHER DISPLACEMENT

 now just to show you all the steps that we took what the result was let's just say i didn't gaussian blur we get this problem where we get this really sharp sort of displacement that doesn't exactly give us that water wavy look that we want and so doing that gaussian blur on the layer allows us to get a smoother displacement and we can go to that layer and we can increase or decrease the blur amount to get a smoother or sharper look and then once we're done with that we can just hide it 

OVERALL COMPOSITION

so we can hide that layer and and the displacement map is still using that layer for information it's just not visible in our overall composition so if i press play on that we get this more gentle wave it's still a bit fast because there's a lot of changes going on quickly but it's a lot smoother looking than if we didn't have the gaussian blur and another thing you can do then from this point is right click on your layer go to blending mode and maybe try out some different ones like hard light or overlay or maybe even drop down the transform menu and in the opacity you can lower the opacity a bit or if you don't see the mode here in the layer panel you can always right click columns and add the mode 

SCREEN MUSIC VIDEO

so you can quickly change it like this instead of always right clicking but you have a few different choices for how to blend so this is just normal at a bit lower opacity and it looks pretty cool it sort of looks like it's maybe at the bottom of the pool or uh in the pool somewhere but this could be cool for a title screen music video whatever project you're working on now let's say we're working on a composition where we don't just have a static pool there's some camera motion involved in this case we can do basically the same thing with a few adjustments in mind so the first thing

CRAZY AMOUNT OF MOTION

 we're going to want to do is go to our tracker panel on the right hand side and if you don't see any of these windows ever you can always go to window make sure you have one of them turned on and we're going to hit track camera that's going to go through all the frames of this and it's going to create tracking points for us to use so do be patient this might take long i do recommend not working with a clip that's too long or it might vary if your clip has a crazy amount of motion there's cases where it might not work easily but for this case you could see it has 254 frames to go through and my computer will just analyze it frame by frame

LAYER CONTROLS

 so we'll catch up when it's done so once it finishes then you'll see the next step is solving camera so it's just solving for the track points that step can take some time as well it doesn't have a progress bar but give it some time and if your computer is capable then you should end up seeing these track points occur so if you don't see them make sure render track points is checked on if you're having a hard time if they're a little small you can always increase the target size or the track point size and also if you can't seem to get them to do anything make sure under the view menu show layer controls is checked on

BRIGHT POINTS AND DARK POINTS

 so now we have our ability to hover over them and see the different options and also remember there's a difference between just clicking on a point and clicking on a sort of triangulation between three points so this is looking at this surface or plane this is looking just at this point so actually going within inside the pool is kind of difficult because all these different uh reflections of light these these bright points and dark points it's kind of hard to for after effects to get an idea of where the surface of this liquid is however right here at the edge of the pool we can clearly track on to this flat circular point and it's close enough that it'll work 

NEW SOLID LAYER

so this looks like a good spot for my clip and if i right click and create a solid and camera that'll create a new solid layer that is tracked to that point and we're simply just going to replace that layer with our logo so i'll right click on that track solid and i'll pre-compose that layer so that we can add some things to it so that's going to create its own pre-composition i can double click on that to open it up and you see here i just have all my compositions open

MY PROJECT MEDIA

 so all we have so far is this that's solid within it but in my project media panel i have dragged in that after effects png logo and i can drag that on a layer above my track solid and i can simply delete the track solid so that it's transparent so that looks like a good size too as well and i can go back to my composition and now we have the after effects logo or whatever we wanted in there instead and it's fully tracked onto the pool 

LUMINANCE

so if i wanted to put it within the pool i can just move it over really i can increase the scale all those options you have within the transform menu if you want to rotate it a bit or put it a little bit into place and then we can do the same steps that we did before with the displacement map effect right onto this layer actually onto this whole pre-composition in fact and you know using more like luminance and using the pool video clip but remember it might be a little rough so if it is like that then let's create a new copy of that and if you ever press return well you highlight that layer you can rename it so i can rename this just 

RIGHT WINDOW 

so i know to be the map layer and i can go to the effects panel search for gaussian blur make sure i spell it right named after the mathematician carl goss that's where the name comes from if you didn't learn anything else in this video and i'll add that onto the map layer and i will increase the blurriness amount and i'll hide that layer and use that as my displacement map layer instead make sure effects and masks is taken into consideration and now if i just go back to my composition window remember a lot of times in after effects if you're troubleshooting or you don't know what's going on just make sure you're in the right window 

LIQUID DISPLACEMENT

so this is double clicked onto the layer window i can close it we're back to our composition window you know if you ever get confused you can go to the window menu and you know go to workspace reset to default saved layout and i can just go to my composition and now i have what i wanted this is what that looks like tracked with some liquid displacement as well and also i can put it on a blending mode just like last time so maybe hard light or maybe just lower the opacity a bit also if you want to turn those track points off after you're done using them you can uncheck render track points 

CONCLUSION 

so that you won't see them in your final results but here we have our final result a motion tracked version of this you can you can do a logo or image or shape or you can just do a text file so it's a little bit more advanced of an example if you like i have more examples on camera tracking and attaching objects to things in after effects on my channel but that's two ideas on creating this water displacement in after effects my name is justin odisho if you enjoyed this video you can subscribe to stay tuned for all my future videos and check out hundreds of more in the playlist on my channel thank you so much for watching

PRESET-LINK