Universe

FRACTAL BACKGROUND

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Getting Started

1. Drag the uni.Fractal Background effect onto your clip.
2. Click the Browse Presets button to see an animated preview of all the presets available. Double-click any preset to apply.

   With looks designed by Motion Graphics Guru Harry Frank, the Fractal Noise Presets gives you quick starting points on a variety of background noise styles. Choose from 15 presets including: Angled Beams, Blurred Ridge, Curtains, Dark Water, Defocus, Light Leaks, Liquid, Muted, Outlines, Scrolling Lights, Shimmer, Slant Lines, Soft Billows, Surface Flow or Vertical Magic.

   Next you’ll find the Color Maps menu which gives you a set of 16 pre-made color schemes. You may adjust these options in the Color Map grouping further down the menu.

Modify the Effect

• The Loop Duration slider allows you to set the frame duration of the looped animation to speed up or slow down how quickly the animated background cycles.
• You may drastically change the look of the selected noise map by using the Scale slider to expand or shrink the size of the noise displayed. Turn it to a smaller number to make it bigger, or a higher number towards 500 to make the pattern smaller.
• The Angle control allows you to turn the noise map to alter the look of the animation.
• When brought up, the Brightness slider will increase up the overall lightness of the three color maps, affecting most intensely the lightest color shown.
• The Contrast slider will allow you to change how blended and soft the noise appears in the image.
• Use the Aspect slider to alter the proportional look between the width and height of the noise map. Turn this slider towards 100.00 to decrease the proportion of the width and emphasize the verticality of the noise, or set the slider down to 0 to spread the width of the noise out horizontally.
• Use Scroll X and Scroll Y to shift the map in either axis.
• Rotations allows you to turn the noise map to alter the look of the animation.
• The Animation Speed allows you to increase or decrease the speed of cycle the looping animation.
• Fractal Type gives you a drop-down to choose between Billowed, Ridged, Perlin, Cellular, Warp and IQ for the type of fractal being used.
• If increased, Complexity will add more iterations of fractal noise into your noise map.
• Invert will switch the light and dark areas noise map that is creating the current pattern, making the noise appear inverted.
• Blur Horizontal and Blur Vertical control the amount of blur along the X or Y axis.
• While the initial color scheme of the Noise map is set by the Color Map Preset menu, you may open the Color Map Group to access the 3 color pickers controls to further customize the look of your background.
• Chose from the Blend Mode drop-down to select the blending mode used to composite the result over the original layer image.
• Blend with Original combines your Fractal Background with your original footage. If you’d like to keyframe a graceful transition, begin with Blend with Original control at 100%, exposing the original image completely and animate it to 0% to show just the Fractal Background.

Text Area

Sometimes you may want to composite text over the background. The Text Area Group is useful for creating areas in which to put readable text into your composition.

• To utilize this group, first choose an option from the Text Area Preset drop down menu. The first option: Hard Backdrop will give you a semi opaque bar that runs across the screen horizontally and has clear, sharp edges. It may be repositioned and resized with the controls beneath it, if desired. The Soft Fuzz option creates a more transparently distributed area in an Ellipse shape across the screen, and the Lower Third option crops the background so that the animated Billowed Background pattern itself becomes a “lower third” style text at the bottom of the screen. Like other options you may alter this look with the controls beneath the preset menu.
• The Height control will expand or contract the height of the Text Area to change the size of your text area.
• Increasing the Feather control will soften and expand the edges of the text area, while bringing it down will sharpen the edges.
• The Opacity slider gives you control over the blending opacity of the Text Area over the Billowed Background. Turn it up to 100% to make it more opaque or bring it down lower to make it more transparent.
• Use the Color picker control to change the color of the Text Area from its original black preset.
• To quickly reposition the lower third bar up or down within the frame, adjust the Vertical Offset slider.
• To quickly reposition the lower third bar left or right within the frame, adjust the Horizontal Offset slider.
• The Shape drop-down menu gives you the option of having a rectangular or curved elliptical shape for your text area.
• When turned on the Mask Invert checkbox will switch the pattern that’s outside of the mask with the look you’ve created of the text area within the mask.
• The Cutout checkbox will solo the masked shape of the text area and hide the rest of the billowed background layer, compositing over the revealed original image underneath.
• Use the Point A and Point B controls to fine tune the position of the text area. Point A is the right side of the frame and Point B is the left side.