How to: Make it look hot (Heat Shimmer)

[Wheat King]

Discovered by accident, Played with it for awhile and came up with what you see in the link below. No doubt there's other ways to achieve this. I was originally playing with the refraction effect (in gpu) but couldn't get it, so I decided to try wave warp.

http://www.muvipix.com/cpg/displayi ... ?pos=-1060

Here's the settings I'm using for two effects.

Wave Warp
Wave Type = Smooth Noise
Wave Height = 40
Wave Width = 50
Direction = 0 degrees
Wave Speed = 0.1
Pinning All Edges
Phase = -90 degrees
Antialiasing = High

Gaussian Blur
Bluriness = 5
Blur dimensions = Horizontal and Vertical

here's Image I used as the original
http://www.muvipix.com/cpg/displayi ... ?pos=-1061

[Jayell]

Nice effect. Looks like you could do lots of tweaking for just the perfect results, but posting your settings really helps get headed in the right direction.

[Wheat King]

I've got it as close as I could it's a lot better than what I started with. I'm hoping someone else might tweak, tinker and post results.

[Jayell]

By the way, I wasn't suggesting that yours left something to be desired .. just meant that with that as a starting point, you could tweak for various different effects, depending on how much shine and shimmer one might be looking for

[Wheat King]

Hope I didn't appear offended. Note to self use more emoticons!!

[momoffduty]

Like this effect, thanks for posting. The wave warp has many options for the settings. Such as the many wave type options. I have printed the help page and gives a little info, but how do you determine which settings to use? Trial and error?

[Jayell]

but how do you determine which settings to use? Trial and error?

Isn't that the problem with so many of these great effects .. with all the settings! I open them up .. then don't have a clue where to start. That's why it's great when someone gives you a starting point .

[Chuck Engels]

This will be perfect for my next film shoot in the desert, we have a great mirage scene and this effect will help to make it great.

Oh wait, I'm not shooting a desert movie with a mirage scene - well how about that home movie of the hot summer days growing up in Chicago

[Wheat King]

Like this effect, thanks for posting. The wave warp has many options for the settings. Such as the many wave type options. I have printed the help page and gives a little info, but how do you determine which settings to use? Trial and error?

Yes, It starts out with Trial and Error, but once you get an idea of how each type effects the clip then you can start making educated guesses. The key is to remember what the effect does in general and not limit yourself. Just cause an effect says wave warp doesn't mean that it couldn't be heat mirage.

[momoffduty]

Glad to know that others use the trial and error format and not just me And for the heat effect, we had it naturally around here the past month.

And jayell, I agree. It is great to get a starting point from other's here. When Chris B posted the melting text prel., it was good to see all the keyframing and the settings.

Thanks Wheat King for posting your settings.

[happy2bapappy]

Right on! Wicked eh!

I could see applications for this for the 'bakers life' profile I'm cooking up.

btw. getting closer to that day. Moved in to the house now. Still unpacking. Office is a mess, but getting there.

Instead of a chattroom as previously discussed though, I'm thinking carrying a thread could be more productive and promote greater participation. I think it's a great idea to go beyond critique of a draft or offering solutions to specific technical issues and actually brainstorming creative input from the very beginning. It will be a fun project that I know will bring transport my skills to a new level.

[Wheat King]

Right on! Wicked eh!

I could see applications for this for the 'bakers life' profile I'm cooking up.

btw. getting closer to that day. Moved in to the house now. Still unpacking. Office is a mess, but getting there.

Instead of a chattroom as previously discussed though, I'm thinking carrying a thread could be more productive and promote greater participation. I think it's a great idea to go beyond critique of a draft or offering solutions to specific technical issues and actually brainstorming creative input from the very beginning. It will be a fun project that I know will bring transport my skills to a new level.

Good idea the thread will be more permanent too you can go back and reread stuff. I find I do that quite a bit. Hasn't been a year this site has been open and already lots of good stuff in here.

I enjoy brainstorming so looking forward to that.

Jamal

[Chuck Engels]

Hasn't been a year this site has been open and already lots of good stuff in here.

Would you believe it is barely 6 months, we opened on February 19th, 2007.

I think the thread is a great idea, if you want a separate forum folder for that just let Ron know - maybe the 'Brainstorming' forum

[RJ Johnston]

Wheat King,

With some keyframming, the Mosaic effect can create some interesting heat wavey effects. There is a custom effect preset named Mirage Heat 4 that I uploaded in a zip file:

http://www.muvipix.com/cpg/displayi ... ?pos=-1068

I thought it looked really good applied to the image you uploaded. Some other images I applied it to looked so-so. You may need to timestretch. The keyframming looked good with a 5 second still. The "vertical blocks" keyframming is kind of like a sine wave: 160 165 170 165 160 155 150 155 160.

RJ

[Wheat King]

Hey RJ.

I imported and tried your preset. Used with the Gaussian Blur it looked great! I decided to get outside of my box again and applied all three together. The Wave Warp, GAussian, and Mosaic. This is the best one so far I think. The mosaic added some "depth".

The wave warp by itself kinda looks kind of side to side. Adding your preset but a little up and down. Makes it look better I think.