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Alligators from Space
Participating Frequently
April 5, 2022
Answered

Scale the middle part of an image to 0

Hello 🙂

 

I wanted to make a cool surreal effect where I scale the middle of an image to 0 so the doorway that is there disappears. The rest of the image gets stretched to replace the missing pixels but the edges don't change at all. The problem is I couldn't find a solution other than a really sketchy mesh warp which would also be way too much work to animate. I added a photo but I also couldn't find a solution to make this effect in Photoshop, so you gotta settle for an image with arrows.

 

I hope you can help me, stay safe, and have a great day ^^

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Mylenium
MyleniumCorrect answer
Legend
April 6, 2022

As David already kind of hinted at, you need to construct an actual fill element somehow, be that PS or by elaborately slicing your footage in AE with masks. This is nothing that can be handled with just an effect or transform since you literally have nothing to work with. More advanced compositing tools with an actual usable 3D space liek Nuke coulkd also use geometry-based re-projection to create such effects.

 

Mylenium

3 replies

Mylenium
MyleniumCorrect answer
Legend
April 6, 2022

As David already kind of hinted at, you need to construct an actual fill element somehow, be that PS or by elaborately slicing your footage in AE with masks. This is nothing that can be handled with just an effect or transform since you literally have nothing to work with. More advanced compositing tools with an actual usable 3D space liek Nuke coulkd also use geometry-based re-projection to create such effects.

 

Mylenium

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Alligators from Space
Participating Frequently
April 6, 2022

Ok, that's a bummer but still thank you for explaing 🙂

 

I thought it was possible because it's after all basically only a stretch but instad of streching it in any direction it streches into the middle of the footage.

 

Thank you both for your help tho and have a great day ^^

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Inspiring
April 5, 2022

One way to set this up is with multiple layers:

1) In Photoshop, cut out the doorway and make it a separate layer, then make two more layers for the back-left and back-right parts of the image.

2) Back in After Effects you'll be able to scale the door to 0

3) Then position the anchor points of the back-left and back-right parts to the left and right edges, respectively, then stretch them using the X Scale parameter.

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