In this tutorial we’ll go over some ways to leverage the incredible power of animated textures within C4D. We’ll be using Adobe After Effects for animation in combination with Octane for rendering.
In order to begin this effect you’ll need to find the ground texture you’d like to use. For this example I am use a ground texture from the “Quarry” pack developed by RDT. If you haven’t checked out RDT yet, I highly recommend it. They produce stunningly realistic photo-scanned textures which I find my self constantly turning back to.
Once you find the texture you’d like to use, go ahead and import the displacement map into After Effects.
Now we need to gather a hand print to use. For me I simply went to google maps and tried my best to find one with an alpha channel already. Once you have the hand print, import that into AE and drag it into your displacement comp.
THE PRINT
The displacement channel in a texture works off of black and white values to create depth within a mesh. Anything that is lighter in color will be raised up, while in contrast anything that is dark will dip into the mesh. So in order to make this effect work we need out hand prints to be a darker grey.
You’ll need to add a fill to the hand-print to change the color and then also add a slight blur in order to match the sharpness of the displacement map. Note: From here you may want to render out some test stills to make sure that the handprint is doing as it should.
Now that we have our handprint, we need it to animate one. Start going to the effects column and adding a “Matte Choker” to our handprint layer. From there key frame the choke from 128 to 0. In order to make this more apparent, we’ll now duplicate the matte choker about 3 times. Lastly keyframe the opacity so that the handprint begins with nothing and then animates in.
DISPLACING DIRT
Once we have the hand pushing into our ground plane the way we like, we now want to add some of the dirt that is being displaced by the hand. This dirt will appear as if it is raising from beneath the hand. So in order to do this we’ll need to use a lighter color so that the texture displaces upwards.
Under our handprint layer, we’ll begin by creating a white solid. Now we can create a mask using the handprint above as a guide. Once you have your mask you’ll want to be sure to feather it out some as well as keyframe the expansion. Keyframing the expansion will give us the illusion that our new solid is revealing from the center before being pushed out to the edges of the fingers. Note: play with the opacity on this layer some in order to determine how high you’d like the dirt to displace.
ADDING THE STROKES
One extra addition I made to this handprint effect was the idea that the fingers or claws were being dragged through the dirt as each hand is being raised off the ground. In order to do this we’ll be using some stroke effects and animating them on.
Create a new solid and add your stroke effect. I’m using 3D stroke from RedGiant for this example. Within the stroke effect animate the “End” parameter from 0 to 100. You’ll also want to enable “Tapering” by checking the box, and also change the “Start/End Shape” to 0.5.
Now that we have our animated hand print ready to go, you can begin to duplicate and offset each print within your main displacement comp. Once you have all of your prints in place you can begin to render out your displacement sequence. Note: TIFF will give you the highest quality, but if will also take MUCH longer to render.
FINAL TOUCHES
With the displacement texture squared away we’ll now need to focus on making it so the liquid within each handprint only appears within the print. In order to do this we’ll need to render out a new sequence that will then be plugged into the opacity of our liquid texture.
Luckily we can just pull from the assets we’ve already created. Begin by taking all of your handprint layers, this is excluding the strokes/dirt build up, and place them in a new comp. You should now have a new comp with just the handprint layers.
The opacity channel within a texture also works with light and dark values to provide a desired result. In this channel anything that is white will be fully opaque. While in contrast, anything that is given the color black will not be visible at all.
CREATING AN OPACITY MATTE
So in order to create our new texture we’ll need out handprints to be white and have the background be white. Simply add a white fill to your prints and then render out your sequence. Note: Make sure to keep your ins and outs for your sequences the same.
Now that we have all of our texture sequences ready to go, all we need to do is import them into C4D and we’re done! One final note is that you’ll need to be sure to set the “Movie End Frame” within the animation tab on each texture. With out this you’re texture will not animate.