fluctuating aura around character

[basshole]

So, another Basshole original question. Couldn't find any posts quite like this through a search.

So, I have a character, and a supervillain, and I would like her to be surrounded by a glowy purple aura, that sort of fluctuates and pulses and whatnot (think of the way a person would look if they were on fire, minus the pain, ha ha. And the "fire" would be very translucent). I'm wondering if this is even possible in AS, after my search turned up nothing.

I thought maybe I could do something with a particle layer, but according to the AS book, the particle layer has a specific point from which the particles emanate. . .I would almost need an entire outline of the character to be the origin point, and have particles emanate from all over the character.

Sure, I could simply make a blob and bind the points so that it moves like the character, and then manually animate the points to simulate the fluctuation, and then make than action and loop it. I was just wondering if there was a better way, something that would kind of randomize and automate the fluctuation.


EDIT:

Okay. . .I think I'm onto something. . .combination of halo and soft edge effects, hide the edges, noisy fill. . .

Can you make the splotchy effect animate? It looks cool, but I don't like how the placement of the texture stays static as the aura moves.

I rendered a seconds worth of frames to see how it looked when animated. It's pretty close to what I want, but is there any way to tweak the speed at which the noisy fill animates? It changes on every frame, and it's a little too frenetic for what I'm after. If I could slow the noise down some, that would get me there, I think. Or, is there something else in AS that does approximately the same thing as the noisy fill?

[slowtiger]

One trick that nearly always is helpful: after ecerything's animated, duplicate the root layer/folder of your glowing character, then tweak the settings of one of them, then fade this duplicate character in and out repeatedly.

Alternatively do two rendering passes and create the pulsation within your compositing suite.

[chucky]

how about a layer shadow set to no 0 offset and the expansion and blur alternates, like this?


you could also copy/blur layer as a mask for some particles to make that fluctuation you're after.
you can do this to a group or bone layer to get the whole character.

[basshole]

Hey, I like that one on the right. Is that with the mask/particles? I haven't done anything with masking yet. Could you walk me through that process?

[chucky]

Hi,Bass, I'm not great with masking.
As for walking you through, I actually had to use a Zimmer frame to get there myself.
There are plenty of tutes around, not that anime masking will EVER make sense, stoopid frickin nonsense that it is.
One thing that I always slip on is that the lower layer may mask the layer above it so it is not as you would expect, stoopid frickin stoopid.... stoop stoopi, mumble grumble groan....

[basshole]

Zimmer frame?

I sort of understand the masking, but it seems that a vector layer has to be the shape past whose bounds nothing can stray. I don't see how to make a bone layer do the same. Unless this only works if my character is one vector layer, which is not the case.

[chucky]

Put all layers into a group or a parent bone layer,(which are the same in essence )
Duplicate the group layer and place below with a particle layer in between the two.
Set the bottom group shadow to max expansion , zero offset, and as much blur as you can, blur the whole group too if you like.

Here is the layer masking setup.
TOP GROUP or BONE layer HIDE ALL
character DON'T MASK THIS LAYER
particles MASK THIS LAYER
copy of character +blur and shadow ADD TO MASK

If you have to do more animation on the character , use Vern's copy bone animation script.

Zimmer frame? JFGI

[basshole]

Just to be clear, we're talking about a master group/bone layer, and then two copies of my bone layer with the character's skeleton and all sublayers, inside the master bone/group layer, right? I was hoping to come up with some scheme to parent the copied bones (the aura) to the original character's, but I guess that's impossible.

[chucky]

the first example was simple no masking just a fluctuating shadow, with the added effect it became complicated.

[basshole]

Right. The first effect was a little to "pulsy" for me. But I'm right about how I interpreted your instructions?

[chucky]

it doesn't need to pulse at all it could be more transparent, the rate and amount of pulse is totally up to you, I used a very short one to limit the gif size.
That's it for me on this topic Bass, over to you.

[basshole]

Ok, finally got it to work. I kept doing things wrong. Pretty cool. It's either this the other way that I mentioned before (noisy fill, etc.). Thanks.


Um, over. And now I finally know what a zimmer frame is. I thought it was some sort of compositing algorithm.