Honestly my first approach would not be particular, but a series of stacked shape layers, each with animated fractal noise scaled really small on both alpha and color channels - this way you get individual control of colors, independent animation for each color (not tied to colorama map) and then parent it all to a null for overall animation. Mettle Freeform pro could come in very handy for shaping the overall forms in real time as well. 

Particular could definitely work, but you may find yourself with some very particular challenges when doing something like this.

Pun definitely intended.

-TG

On Wed, May 14, 2014 at 9:02 AM, D <dow.hanson@gmail.com> wrote:

I’ve followed the same general direction as you suggest Chris but used Particular to generate the basic movement with a Mosaic preset on top. The preset was a great start point as it uses Fractal noise, Mosaic, Median and Tri-Tone which is perfect as I have a palette of 3 colours. I then added posterise time onto an adjustment layer for the whole comp. 

Much easier to create than I had imagined. 

Cheers.

On 14 May 2014 11:48, Chris Zwar <chris@chriszwar.com> wrote:

Well these sorts of questions are always fun… here's thinking out loud:

- I'd be thinking about how these types of images are generated.  I'd work greyscale and then use colourama at the end.  You could eyedropper the reference still to get the same colours.

- The images are quite low res, and I'm guessing quite low FPS.  So I'd use the mosaic effect to make it blocky, and posterise time (either the plugin or as a time remapping expression) to reduce the frame rate of the animation

- There's a subtle bend in the graphics.  There are a few options for this in the distort effects, including CC bender, CC bend it and the old stock favourite Polar Co-Ordinates.

- I'd do the actual keyframeable animation in a pre comp.  It could be as simple as white blobs on a transparent background.  You might be fine with animating masks on a solid, or using several small solids.  But start with a simple base composition that has just the bits you need to control.  Then add noise and grunge in another composition - you can always use fractal noise, turbulent displace, roughen edges to create a grungy version.  Remember - greyscale is fine.  add colour at the end, that's how the real stuff is done.

So:

1) Base pre comp with the main elements

2) Grunge version

3) Add mosaic effect and posterise time

4) Bender / bend it / polar coordinates

5) Colourama

Have fun,

-Chris

On 14/05/2014, at 6:03 PM, D <dow.hanson@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi,

I think I vaguely remember this coming up once before on here. I need to create and animate a Doppler radar weather type  graphic. Similar to this:

http://www.crh.noaa.gov/images/arx/top10/fayette0525.png

I need to be able to control its centre point and also the position of colours. The centre of the 'storm' would move between predetermined points over time. 

Feels like a job for Particular but I'm unsure of the most efficient way of going about it. I have 27 different positions for the 'storm' to move between in a minute so ideally the only manual key frames I'll be pulling will be positional. 

Suggestions for start points appreciated.

Thanks. 

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VFX & Motion Graphic Artist
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