Displacement Map Effect Tutorial (After Effects 7)
Published May 23rd, 2006 in After Effects Tutorials, Intermediate After Effects Tags: 7, adobe, after, after effects, displacement, effects, tip, tips, tutorial, tutorials.A Displacement Map effect changes the position (displaces) of pixels either horizontally or vertically or both, based upon the grey-scale or luma values in a separate reference layer.
Original (left), Displacement Map (background) applied (right)
Using a displacement map
- Create a new Composition and place a still image or your movie footage onto a layer. (I created a new white solid with a circle mask applied. I then added Effect/ Generate/ Ramp to the white solid and made the start color red and the end color yellow)
- On another layer place footage or image that will act as the displacement map. It would be good to make it grey-scale so you can see how it is effecting your main footage when the effect is applied. (I created a new white solid the size of the composition, then added an Animation Preset to the white solid. Find the Effects & Presets window and click in the arrow in the top right corner of the window and choose Browse Presets. This will open up Adobe Bridge (which could take a second or two) Now just find an animation that you like, I chose Smoke Rising ffx. I then double clicked the effect to add it to my solid)
- Once you have your effect that you want to act as the displacement layer we then have to pre-compose that layer (so it is a self contained footage rather than a solid with effects). Choose the displacement map layer and choose Layer/ Pre-compose
- Select our main footage layer (not the displacement map layer) and choose Effect/ Distort/ Displacement Map. Immediately we should see a minor change to the image, but we now need to adjust the values to get desired effect.
- Set the Displacement Map Layer drop down list to source your displacement layer.
- Now play with the Max Horizontal Displacement and the Max Vertical Displacement to see how your image changes. I’ve used a value of Max Horizontal Displacement = 5 and Max Vertical Displacement = 45
- Well, that’s the basic concept of displacement maps. Take some time to try different background images and animation as displacement maps and adjusting values.
