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Now
we want to create the displacement map for the swirling sand. This will
fit into the circular area we created in the first displacement map. So,
it needs to be the same size as that area. Create a new comp that's 400x400.
Or you may just want to open the Whirlpool comp and look at what I've
already done.
Create a New Solid that's also 400x400. Again, apply a circular mask that's
about the size of the layer. Use the same method we used before.
To create the whirlpool, we're going to add some fractal noise and use
the Twirl filter to create a spinning, whirlpool like effect. The trick
here is that we only want the sand going down. Remember that any shade
lighter than neutral gray will cause the polygons to be displaced upwards.
It wouldn't look very whirlpool like if the sand starting going up in
the air. If we wanted to make the sand, or monkeys or something fly, then
maybe that'd be great, but we don't. If you want monkeys to fly, that's
your own weird, neurotic hangup and you'll have to deal with it on your
own time.
To prevent animals that have no business flying from doing so, we need
to make sure our shades of gray are all darker than neutral gray. This
will cause all the polygons to be displaced downward.
Apply Fractal Noise to the solid. Leave it at the default settings.
Apply Gaussian Blur and set it to 10.
Apply the Levels filter. This is where we'll make sure all our shades
of gray are darker than neutral gray.
Set the Output Black parameter to 61, and set Output White to 122. This
will limit the shades of gray. If you don't understand how this works,
I highly recommend you read up on the Levels filter. It's an extremely
important filter to understand. Probably won't be as good of reading as
Dune, but it's just as necessary that you should read it.
Now apply the Twirl filter and set it to 125. We need to animate this,
so go to 01:14 in the timeline and set a keyframe. Jump to 06:14 in the
timeline and change the value to 1x 125 (one revolution plus 125 degrees).
This will give us a nice twirling animation.
The filters should look like this:
Our comp should look like this (the black is just the background):
Now we have to do a couple other things to make this really work.
Create a New Solid that is neutral gray (128 in each of the RGB channels)
and put it behind the whirlpool layer. This will prevent any displacement
from occuring around the edges of the map.
The other thing we want to do is have the sand around the edges not quite
as affected as the sand in the middle. We want the sand in the center
to start falling inward first, then slowly drag the sand around the edges
in.
To accomplish this, we want to make the shades of gray around the edge
of the twirling fractal noise, closer to neutral gray.
Create a new solid and apply the Ramp filter (Effects>Render>Ramp).
Set the Ramp Shape to Radial Ramp.
Set the Start Color to white.
Set the End Color to black.
Set the Start of Ramp to 200,200.
In the Timeline, show the Transfer Modes section.
Change the track matte for the whirlpool layer to Luma Matte and use the
Ramp layer.
The Timeline should look like this:
and the image should look like this:
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Create
a new 640x480 comp called Arrakis.
Put both your Dune displacement map and the Twirling displacement map
into the Arrakis comp. Turn both of them off. (click on the eyeball so
it disappears)
Create a New Solid that's 640x480 and apply Psunami to it.
To make it easier to work with, in the Render Options section, change
the Render Mode to Wireframe. Psunami can be a bit slow, so when you're
setting things up, it's best to view it all in Wireframe mode. This renders
pretty quickly and makes setting most stuff up a snap.
The first thing we need to do is go down to the Primary Waves section
and turn off the water simulation. We do this by setting the Wind Speed
parameter to 0. Once you do this, you'll notice the 3D grid now becomes
flat.
Now go to the Light 1 section, and set Light Elevation to 75, and set
Glitter Scale to 0.
Open up the Image Map 1 section. We'll create our dunes with this map.
Notice the 3D grid will now become kind of 'lumpy' once we do this. Also
notice that nothing moves, as you would expect.
Set it up so it looks like this:
The 'Displace On' parameter is set to green, but in this case it could
be red, green, or blue. Since we're dealing with a grayscale image, all
the channels look the same.
Now Open up the Image Map 2 section. We'll use this to create the whirlpool
of sand.
Set it up so it looks like this:
By default the images line up on top of each other. Since we created
the gray circle in the middle of our Dune displacement map the Twirl displacement
map is centered on top of it, and thus falls right into the gray circle.
Let's back our camera up a little bit, so the gray circle of the Dune
displacement map is right in view. Open the Camera section and set the
'X east-west' parameter to -20.
Go back to the Render Options section and change the Render Mode to Realistic.
After a few moments, we'll have a render that looks like this:
Hmm... this looks kind of dark and not very sand like. Well, ok, maybe
sand at night, but that's not what we're going for. It needs a texture.
Let's do a quick and dirty texture. Hey, it's sand, it should be dirty.
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Create
a New Solid that's 640x480.
Apply
Fractal Noise to it.
Set Contrast to 50, and set Scale to 5.
Apply
Hue/Saturation (Effect>Adjust>Hue/Saturation).
Set the effect up like this:
We
now have a dirty, beige texture. Go ahead and pre-comp (command/control+shift+c)
this and name it 'dune texture'.
Go
back to the layer with Psunami applied to it and in the Image Map 3 section,
select the 'dune texture' layer.
Set it up like this:
Note
the blur amout. This blurs the fractal noise. While the noise is great
for adding some variation to the color of the sand, by default it's a
little to sharp. Blurring it makes one color blend nicely into the other
color.
We've
also moved the map along the X axis to move the seam of the texture out
of the view of the camera. Again, if the camera was moving around, we'd
have to take much greater care about the edges of our texture and displacement
maps.
And all that should give you something that looks like this:
Woohoo!
We're done! You should now have nice swirling sand.
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