Adobe After Effects CS4 - Manual (Page 504)

498 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4
Effects and animation presets
Last updated 12/21/2009
• Choke Contracts the area of the fill color. The Spread Radius value indicates the number of pixels the fill color
shrinks from the edge of the fill area.
• Stroke Confines the fill to only the border of the selected area. The Stroke Width value indicates the width of the
stroke, in pixels.
Color The fill color.
Opacity Opacity of the filled area.
Blending Mode The blending mode to use to composite the result of the effect on top of the original layer. All of these
blending modes operate like the blending modes in the Timeline panel, except for Fill Only. Use Fill Only to show only
the fill.
Note: If you apply multiple instances of Paint Bucket to a layer, be sure not to set more than one to use the Fill Only
blending mode. If you set more than one instance to use this blending mode, only the first application of the effect is shown.
Radio Waves effect
The Radio Waves effect creates radiating waves from a stationary or animated effect control point. You can use this
effect to generate pond ripples, sound waves, or intricate geometric patterns. Use the Reflection control to make the
shapes bounce off the sides of the layer. You can also use Radio Waves to create realistic wave displacement maps that
work well with the Caustics effect.
Satya Meka provides a video tutorial and some tips for using the Radio Waves effect on his website . Satya demonstrates
animation of the mask that the radio wave shape is based on. He also demonstrates that you can get smooth, organic
contours (rather than discrete waves) by using a very high value for Frequency, together with carefully chosen Fade-
in Time and Fade-out Time settings.
This effect works with 8-bpc color.
Polygon wave type with square stroke profile (lower-left), and Image Contour wave type with Sine stroke profile (lower-right)
Producer Point The point from which the waves appear.
Parameters Are Set At Specifies whether parameters can be animated for individual waves. Birth specifies that each
wave maintains the same parameter settings over time. Each Frame specifies that the waves change as the parameters
change. For example, if you create a star wave with an animated rotation property, select Birth to offset each star from
the previous one to create a twisting tunnel, or select Each Frame to make all the stars rotate in unison as the rotation
property changes.
Render Quality Controls the quality of the output. Radio Waves creates smooth, anti-aliased shapes by rendering
high-resolution versions of the shapes and then scaling them down by oversampling. For example, to create a 100x100-