Radio Waves
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The Tutorial You’ve Been Waiting For
Alright, let’s go ahead and look at how we can create a looping animated background ala Loony Toons.[an error occurred while processing this directive]Begin by creating a New Composition that is at least 25 seconds long. To this composition, create a new solid (name it Radio Waves) that is the size of the comp (in this example, I used the DV NTSC preset).
To this solid layer apply the Radio Waves effect. Nothing too much is going to happen right now because we are at the beginning of the Timeline. Move the Timeline Indicator to at least 10:00 on the Timeline.
Under the Stroke controls, change the Start Width to 1 and the End Width to 100. Select a dark green color for the waves. Finally, change the Profile to Sawtooth In. This causes the leading edge of the Radio Waves to be solid, with the trailing edge appearing to fade out. This portion is key to getting the look of light hitting the rim of the layer.Because we don’t want the waves to move extremely fast, let’s adjust the frequency and expansion just enough so we have some nice overlaps. Twirl down the Wave Motion controls. Set the Frequency to 1.50 and the Expansion to 1.75. The results show that as the waves move outward, they appear to get thicker and overlap one another. We are almost finished with this backdrop.
Create another New Solid. Name this solid Backdrop, make it the size of the composition and give it a bright yellow color. In the Timeline place the Backdrop layer behind the Radio Waves layer.
The contrast between the two colors looks pretty sharp, however, I would like to see a larger blank area of the yellow background to place words and text. You would think a mask applied to the Radio Waves layer would take care of this, but because of the way After Effects handles effects and masks, we won’t get the results we desire.
Source: Digital Media Online, Inc.
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