So Im trying to recreate this effect: basically a blob of squares that fade in and out from eachother individually.
Here is a picture of what it looks like:
and heres a video of what the effect is like: (youtube) /watch?v=0y-A4yWnnes
The video is very grainy and low quality (you have to full screen it to see the effect) but as you can see each square in the blob fades in and out independently from the one next to it to almost make a twinkling effect. The fade is also non linear going from 100% opacity to 50% to 70% to 20% and then back up to %100 on some. On other squares its completely linear from 100% opacity to 10% back to 100%.
Now I know of only two ways to accomplish this effect:
1. Individually create each square as its own layer and animate the opacity on each one to make it look like the effect. The only problem here is, with the size of picture I want to give this effect to, I will have to create roughly 1200 different squares/layers, and photoshop seems to have trouble if I have more than 200 layers visible at any given time.
2. My second option is to create 20 - 30 different layers with a few random location squares in different places (to the point that if you had every layer of the 30 visible, youd see the entire picture, but say if you turned off a few layers, youd see some of the squares missing). And then once that is accomplished, create an opacity mask for each of the 30 layers with varying percents of opacity in various parts of the mask and animate the location of the mask. The problem with this though is that I wont have the same level of control as option 1, and it has the potential of looking "cheaper". The other problem for this too is that I dont know how to animate an opacity mask.
If anyone knows how to create this animated effect or knows how to make option 1 possible, I would greatly appreciate it!
Thanks,
Justin
Here is a picture of what it looks like:
and heres a video of what the effect is like: (youtube) /watch?v=0y-A4yWnnes
The video is very grainy and low quality (you have to full screen it to see the effect) but as you can see each square in the blob fades in and out independently from the one next to it to almost make a twinkling effect. The fade is also non linear going from 100% opacity to 50% to 70% to 20% and then back up to %100 on some. On other squares its completely linear from 100% opacity to 10% back to 100%.
Now I know of only two ways to accomplish this effect:
1. Individually create each square as its own layer and animate the opacity on each one to make it look like the effect. The only problem here is, with the size of picture I want to give this effect to, I will have to create roughly 1200 different squares/layers, and photoshop seems to have trouble if I have more than 200 layers visible at any given time.
2. My second option is to create 20 - 30 different layers with a few random location squares in different places (to the point that if you had every layer of the 30 visible, youd see the entire picture, but say if you turned off a few layers, youd see some of the squares missing). And then once that is accomplished, create an opacity mask for each of the 30 layers with varying percents of opacity in various parts of the mask and animate the location of the mask. The problem with this though is that I wont have the same level of control as option 1, and it has the potential of looking "cheaper". The other problem for this too is that I dont know how to animate an opacity mask.
If anyone knows how to create this animated effect or knows how to make option 1 possible, I would greatly appreciate it!
Thanks,
Justin