July 10, 2009

A 3D Radio Waves plug-in for After Effects

Satya Meka has been rehabilitating the Radio Waves, a favorite old filter built into After Effects, with projects discussed earlier in The Secret Menu of Radio Waves in After Effects. Now he's working on 3D Radio Waves Plug-in for After Effects.


3D Radio Waves Plugin For After Effects from Satya Meka on Vimeo.

The filter will produce radio waves in 3D space with its own camera controls (see comments). The short demo video above is a raw demonstration. Mask and Image contour support is in development; it also has opacity and width settings like that of original radio waves. Each wave can rotate in XYZ with respect to the origin or any point and can produce polygons up to 20,000 sides compared to 128 sides of the original effect. And it's GPU-accelerated.

The downside is that it's Mac only! That's because it's a Core Image filter created in Quartz Composer and compiled using the Pixlock Effect Builder AE. Satya Meka is planning to release a private beta soon.

It's unfortunate that only Mac users have access to Apple Quartz Composer, FxFactory, Pixlock Effect Builder AE, and QC Integration FX, while Windows users have only disjointed features available in Pixel Bender, Conduit for Flash Pixel Bender, and other sundry image processing geekery end user tools. But who knows what will pop up.

1 comment:

Satya Meka said...

There has been a small misunderstanding. I meant to say the plugin comes with its own camera controls. I synced the active camera by using very simple expressions, which shouldn't be a problem for regular use.

regards,
Satya.