Hi there, today is Friday that means TUTORIAL FRIDAY!!!
n�h just having a lot of free time now, so I thougt I would contribute with one more tutorial.. and to be honest.. I'm bored..

Let's start with something easy..

Step 1:
Open good old Photoshop and create some backgroundpic with the size 320x240 for your ripple effect. I've just been so free to take the cool designed stickman from jays blog. (I really love this stickman guy)


Step 2:
Now let's get dirty with after effects.
Put the Material we've just created in Photoshop into a new Composition (320x240, 4secs length).
Next, let's create some cheap zoom-out effect, that's accomplished with a scaling animation, here a screenshot of my keyframes.

I've also applied a Keyframe Easing to it. Here's how to do it:
Select both keyframes (with shift holded) and push your rightmouse button, then just go to Keyframe Assistant -> Easy Ease out or alternally you can just push (CTRL+SHIFT+F9)

Step 3:
Let's create a Circular mask starting from the middle of the composition.
Pick your Elliptical Mask tool or just press (Q), and drag a Circle on your composition holding the SHIFT+CTRL key (SHIFT for the proportion and CTRL for the centering). Furtheron you should give your mask a feather of about 50 or 70 px, that will make it look nice and smooth without any hard edges.

Now you should have this:


Let's again animate this mask using the Mask Expansion parameter, this time I've used Easy Ease in (refer to step 2 to see how this has been created)


Step 4:
Where's the Ripple?? Let's do it now..

Create a new composition and put a new solid in it, color doesn't matter, just be sure that is the same size as the composition.
Apply to this solid the Wave World Effect (Effect - Simulation - Wave World)
There are a bunch of settings that you can change, I will not go too deep into it (since I also don't know what every parameter is doing :blink: )


I've just animated the Amplitute parameter over 3 frames. On frame 1 meaning (00:00:00.00) I've put an amplitude of 0.250, and 2 frames later on frame 3 (00:00:00.03) switch off the amplitude to 0.0.
Why are you switching off this cool effect?? If you don't switch it off it will create every second a new ripple starting over and over again and we don't want that.

Step 5:
Now put the material of step 2 and step 3 into a new composition, and click on the eyeball Icon of the "Wave" Composition to make it invisible.
Select the Picture Composition and apply the Caustics Effect (Effect - Simulation - Caustics)
Here the Settings I've used:

Either you use my settings or you play around with it, I think they are pretty self-explanatory.

FINISHED



Boys & Girls, that's it, were done.
Just as reminder, try to use your own settings play around use the "trial and error" method..

As always, HERE my movie for you as reference.

Next time we will do a cool flowing title effect.. stay tuned for more!

Have a nice weekend

Funkysoul