Adobe After Effects CS4 - Manual (Page 482)

476 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4
Effects and animation presets
Last updated 12/21/2009
• Soft Uses spline algorithms. If you scale the image beyond 100%, Soft reduces edge pixelation and maintains image
quality. Soft works well at large magnification amounts.
• Scatter Creates scatter or noise in the image as the image enlarges.
Blending Mode The blending mode used to combine the magnified area with the original layer. The None option
displays transparent pixels around the magnified area.
Resize Layer If Resize Layer is selected, the magnified area can extend beyond the boundaries of the original layer.
Mesh Warp effect
The Mesh Warp effect applies a grid of Bezier patches over a layer, which you can manipulate to distort areas of an
image. Each corner of a patch includes a vertex and two to four tangents (points that control the curvature of the line
segment that makes up the edge of the patch). The number of tangents depends on whether the vertex is in a corner,
on an edge, or inside the grid. By moving the vertices and tangents, you can manipulate the shape of the curved line
segment. The finer the grid, the tighter the adjustments you can make to the area of the image inside the patch.
The Mesh Warp effect is commonly used to morph a pair of images to create a transition from one image to another.
This effect works with 8-bpc and 16-bpc color.
Original (upper-left), with distortion mesh (lower-left), and with Mesh Warp applied (lower-right)
To select multiple vertices, Shift-click the vertices.
Rows, Columns Specify up to 31 patches vertically (Rows) or horizontally (Columns). For broader distortion, use
fewer patches. For finer control, use more. Drag the vertices and tangents to change the grid shape. The image follows
the grid shape according to the elasticity setting and the boundary created by the adjacent patch.
Quality Specifies how closely the image follows the shape defined by the curve. The higher the quality value, the more
closely the image follows the shape. Higher quality settings require more rendering time.
Distortion Mesh Click the stopwatch to animate the distortion over time.
Note: Each patch becomes a boundary for the distortion. For example, when you stretch a patch, the area of the image in
the patch stretches, squishing the area of the image in the adjacent patch. The boundary of the adjacent patch protects
the image inside it from being squished to zero. In other words, you can’t push an image out of its patch.