The Smear Factor - Adobe After Effects Tutorial

Jacquelin Vanderwood April 1, 2004   1 With a movie or graphic in place, open the Distort effect and select Smear.   2 Using first the Rectangle Mask tool to draw a rectangle around the piece and then selecting the Oval Mask tool, draw an oval either in the center or somewhere inside the rectangle.   3 For Source Mask choose Mask 1 and for Boundary Mask select Mask 2. First we'll work with Percent.   4 With a Percent setting of 14%, look at the way the text is drawn inward.   5 To animate a Smear distortion, click on the Mask Scale clock. Hit U to open up the layer. Move to keyframe 1:10. Put a check in the box. Set the Mask Scale to .50 and the Percent to 38%.   6 Use the Selection tool to reshape the mask.   7 Set keyframes at 2:10. Then copy and paste as shown. Make sure to copy the first keyframes in the last instance. To make more interesting animations, try moving the Mask Offset point around and reshaping Mask 2.     Copyright 1998-2004, Jacquelin Vanderwood, All Rights Reserved