Photorealistic Waves

[eric_darling]

http://www.ethreemedia.com/waves.mov

A little something I cooked up using After Effects, Psunami and Shine volumetrics. Really simple to do, and incredibly believable.
(movie is ~760Kb, non-progressive)

[Corey]

Yep. Looks absolutely fantastic on my end.

[eric_darling]

It's all plug-ins doing the magic. Nothing special from yours truly, I was just shocked how easy it was to create something like that so easily right inside AE. Usually, nothing is that easy the first time through.

Psunami - www.digitalanarchy.com
Shine - www.trapcode.com

The trapcode guy is brilliant - check out some of the gallery samples on his site.

[Corey]

Oh yeah, for sure. It's nothing at all. Peanuts. P'shaw!

For Carlos Santana, every solo is a breeze, nothing more than a couple notes here and there on a simple old guitar...

P.S. I agree, the trapcode guy is a stone cold genius. And a class act.

[eric_darling]

Whoa, hold on. I am no Carlos Santana. Maybe his roadie.
Thanks, Corey. I guess I feel similarly about the many amazing creative coders around here. And the extra chops folks have in other areas are pretty inspiring, too. That Bruce guy can paint a MEAN floor.

Do take a moment to check out the gallery at Trapcode for some beautiful examples of what truly gifted motion graphics artists can do with their plug-ins. I'm a mere onlooker in comparison to most of those folks.

[Corey]

Yes everyone should check out the trapcode gallery for sure. I agree that Bruce paints an *amazing* floor, that's pretty much the most beautiful floor I've ever seen anyhow. I wish I could skate it, it looks smooooooooth.

The Santana metaphor being that it's easy for you but not for me. It would take me a week just to figure out how to set the project up, let alone get it looking realistic. Also, I have the brain of a crow, so there's a good chance something shiny would distract me first. *Very* good, in fact I almost didn't finish this sentence because a keychain is within my periphery.

As I grow older my playing is becoming a bit more Santana-ish. I'm starting to see how control and simplicity become a very effective way to express extremely complex ideas once the foundation becomes strong enough. It's like memorizing the entire dictionary just so that you can inject one incredibly insightful word into a sentence when it comes up. Nothing different between that and what you do IMO. And it's going to take a very firm beating from a gang of wayward youths to make me consider otherwise, so...

[eric_darling]

Age is the cure-all for the over-confident, I've found. It sure worked a number on me. Hasn't hurt my propensity to apply one too many hyphens, though, you might have noticed... I'll try and stave off that gang of youths in the meanwhile.

[Corey]

Yep. It's a balancing act. It's a necessary quotient for great work in any field but too much makes the whole cake sour. Luckily I believe in unmitigated excess so none of that effects me personally but for the rest of you cats it's a real doozy.

[TJ_Tigger]

WOW I felt like I should be holding my breath.

Great work.

[Dez]

Eric,
This looks really good...sets a mood right away.

Dez

[eric_darling]

Thanks, Dez and Tigg. I'm still blown away by those filters. Honestly, I've sweated so many more bullets over so many more mundane things that this seems trivially easy in comparison.