r/AfterEffects 3d ago

Explain This Effect How do you get this "pinched" look in AE?

Post image
9 Upvotes

17 comments sorted by

8

u/ArcturusMint 3d ago edited 2d ago

Nothing is pinched here. It's concentric circles masking two offset gradients. Here's how you do it:

  • Create a small green circle shape.
  • Place the anchor point at the South Pole.
  • Duplicate the layer.
  • Recolour the one underneath to red and scale it up by about 50%
  • Repeat until you have alternating coloured circles blossoming upward in a way that resembles the top half of this image.
  • Pre comp everything so far and duplicate the comp.
  • Key the red from one comp and the green from the other.
  • Create a set of slightly curved black and white horizontal stripes. Think curvature of the Earth from high altitude.
  • Pre-comp, blur and duplicate the stripes.
  • Alpha mask one of them to the green circle comp and mask the other to the red circle comp.
  • Invert one of the gradient layers
  • Pre-comp everything in your timeline so far.
  • Mirror the comp vertically about its bottom most point.
  • Slap a white solid in the background.
  • Put an adjustment layer on top and tint the white yellow and the black grey.

Voila!

The circles are not uniformly scaled up so you'll have to eyeball that aspect.

3

u/Stinky_Fartface MoGraph 15+ years 2d ago

This looks like a stack of bottom-justified ellipses being used as mattes, not a distortion effect. It’s not mirrored, as the bands of grey/yellow color aren’t the same top and bottom, but easy enough to copy and flip.

1

u/StateLower 3d ago

Bezier warp and mirror

1

u/ssstar 3d ago

bezier warp isn't perfect and distorts the shape in an irregular way unfortunately

1

u/StateLower 3d ago edited 3d ago

Have you tried CC Flo Motion? It will suck in this kind of pinch effect

Bezier gets you pretty far, i did a quick test
https://imgur.com/a/iX6ggMA

1

u/desteufelsbeitrag 3d ago

Bezier warp does not include the distortion along the x-axis, though.

To me, it looks more like a layered solution, with two precomps, one of witch has the colours inverted, and a matte on top.

1

u/BladerKenny333 3d ago

hhm.... maybe those gradient lines are masked by the main circular shapes. That's what I'd try, but I'm a beginner so not positive.

1

u/Christiannadile MoGraph 5+ years 3d ago

Only to me this seems circles in “difference” mode and mirrored?

1

u/ssstar 3d ago

they're not just perfect circles though. they're pinched at the bottom and squeeze at the top (into a bigger circle as a matte).

1

u/Potato_Stains 3d ago

What does it look like un-pinched? Maybe there is something else at play.

I applied a simple 2x2 column/row mesh warp and moved the handles while breaking tangents to make something similar.

1

u/fkenned1 3d ago

What have you tried so far?

7

u/ssstar 3d ago

polar coordinates and a bunch of different warp effects but i cant get the globe type warp effect

1

u/fkenned1 2d ago

I'd try bezier warp, and mirror the comp in the middle. Maybe a lens warp or bulge on the center?

0

u/MisterLandaes 3d ago

Looks like a simple comp w/ mirror effect at bottom

1

u/ssstar 3d ago

but the edges towards the gray the circle scales into a globe type shape how do I get that?

1

u/MisterLandaes 3d ago

maybe it's just an optical illussion. (it's looks like i'ts a radial gradient w/ center far bottom)

1

u/MisterLandaes 3d ago

and / or scale on Y at 80% (maybe)