Underwater effect

[lumo]

Hello. I'm new here and also new to animation, and I have a question about the underwater effect.

The goal is adding the effect like this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUh8elAk9G0
I've already found a few posts here but most of them were posted 5+ years ago so I'm looking for a modern and simple method.

By the way I'm using Moho 14.

Thanks in advance!

[hayasidist]

not quite the same .. is this any help? https://youtu.be/DhOl6hxT5TU

[Greenlaw]

Hello. I'm new here and also new to animation, and I have a question about the underwater effect.
The goal is adding the effect like this video:

A fractal pattern can be used to displace the pixels in an animation. The common and easiiest way to do this is to render out the Moho footage, and apply the effect in a compositing program like After Effects or Fusion.

It is possible to do this in Moho, though. It just takes a little more work...

1. Render out the footage as a PNG sequence.
2. Import the PNG sequence into a new Moho project.
3. Add a vector layer above the image sequence layer.
4. Inside the vector layer, create a grid that covers the image sequence.
5. Open the Layer Settings for the image Sequence layer, and set the Warp Layer to the vector layer with the grid.
6. Select the vector layer and set the current frame to zero.
7. Choose the Menu command Script > Warp > Wavy.... This tool will apply an animated displacement to the points of the grid. The Duration is the number of frames for the effect, Frequency is the speed, and Amplitude is the strength. For this effect, try F=0.5 and A=0.25. The result is an animation that is slow and not too distorted. Like this...


(Stock image from Adobe.)

To me, the above looks a little unnatural because the wave pattern is too regular. To add some natural turbulence in the effect, you can try adding a less dense grid in a second vector layer, and use the Magnet tool to add some 'organic' animation to it. You only need two or three keyframes for the animation. Keep the motion subtle, unless there's rough activity happening. Now use this the second grid to displace the first grid with the original Wavy animation.

It's also possible to retime the animation after creating the keyframes. Just grab all the keys, press and hold ALT, and then drag the last keyframe left or right in the Timeline. (In the above example, I stretched the animation to 96 frames to slow it down.)

Here's the project used for the above animation, if you want to experiment with it.

UnderwaterEffect.zip

Hope this helps.

[Greenlaw]

The above works well enough when you only have Moho, but if you have a compositing program, I recommend using that instead.

In a compositing program, you can adjust the effect interactively, without pre-baking the keys. You also have options for getting a more natural look, and you can animate the displacement in any direction, including towards or away from the camera.

The compositing programs I like are After Effects and Fusion. After Effects is very friendly with Moho, especially when you use Moho's Layer Comps to export multiple passes. I generally prefer Fusion for CG and live action VFX work, but many years ago, I use Fusion to composite my first Moho short film Scareplane.

[lumo]

Hi, thanks for the tip and the example file!

The compositing programs I like are After Effects and Fusion. After Effects is very friendly with Moho, especially when you use Moho's Layer Comps to export multiple passes. I generally prefer Fusion for CG and live action VFX work, but many years ago, I use Fusion to composite my first Moho short film Scareplane.

If I can use Fusion in the free version DaVinci Resolve I'm interested in using it.