Radio Waves
Page 3 of 5
So the waves don’t live forever, the Lifespan was lowered to 2, meaning they would live for two seconds before dying. Because the first second of the wave’s life is hidden and trimmed, you the viewer only see the last second of life.
You will also notice that the waves fade out as they die. This is controlled in the Stroke Controls.[an error occurred while processing this directive]
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| Stroke Controls |
Because you probably don’t want your radio waves to be a thin blue line all the time, the ability to color and resize the wave is the second most important control setting for this effect.
The Fade In and Fade Out times reflect the time (in seconds) it will take for the wave to become visible (Fade In) and disappear (Fade Out). Both of these begin the moment a wave is emitted from the Producer Point. By default the Fade Out time is set to 5, but lowering the number can create some very interesting effects. In the above example, I lowered the Fade Out time to .5 to make the waves have a fast attack and slow decay rate.
While the other settings in this control area are pretty self explanatory, the only other control you may have difficulty with is the Profile. The Profile controls the appearance of the shape of the wave, and thus the perceived shape. Take a look at the two waves with the default Square profile and then compare that with the shape of the waves when Sawtooth In is selected. The Sawtooth In gives the impression that the wave has a very strong leading edge, while the rest of the wave diminishes. One way to think of the Sawtooth In profile is to compare it to the Praxis Moon explosion from the Star Trek movies. The leading edge of the explosion contains the bulk of the wave, while the slower particles trail it. Experiment with the other Profile settings to see what you get.
The Tutorial You’ve Been Waiting For
Source: Digital Media Online, Inc.
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