Wave Warp Affecting Individual Elements - even in precomp and JPEG

Question

I’d like to add a wave warp distortion effect to a bunch of stripes. The blue marking on the attached image is what I am trying to create. However, when I add the wave warp effect, it warps the individual stripes, not the image as a whole (See image). I have tried everything. I pre-comped the stripes (and didn’t have continuously rasterize on - see image); I recreated it in Illustrator and added it as an illustrator import; I even turned it into a JPEG and added it as a JPEG and it still treated the stripes individually (See image)! The JPEG scenario really confused me, as the stripes are “baked” in to the image. I am currently using AE 2026, so I tried AE 2024, and it still did the same thing. Am I just misunderstanding how wave warp works? I would think that with a JPEG, AE wouldn’t even be able to recognize it as individual stripes.

Warren Heaton · Accepted Answer

Hi, ​@Julia221184797dj9:I’m thinking that you want to increase the Wave Width value and probably change the Pinning type.Do any of these look like what you’re looking to achieve?Adobe After Effects 9.0 Keyframe Data Units Per Second 29.97 Source Width 1920 Source Height 1080 Source Pixel Aspect Ratio 1 Comp Pixel Aspect Ratio 1LayerEffects Wave Warp #1 Wave Type #2 Frame   0 1 Effects Wave Warp #1 Wave Height #3 Frame   0 30 Effects Wave Warp #1 Wave Width #4 Frame percent  0 360 Effects Wave Warp #1 Direction #5 Frame degrees  0 120 Effects Wave Warp #1 Wave Speed #6 Frame pixels  0 1 Effects Wave Warp #1 Pinning #7 Frame   0 5 Effects Wave Warp #1 Phase #8 Frame degrees  0 120 Effects Wave Warp #1 Antialiasing (Best Quality) #9 Frame   0 1 End of Keyframe DataAdobe After Effects 9.0 Keyframe Data Units Per Second 29.97 Source Width 1920 Source Height 1080 Source Pixel Aspect Ratio 1 Comp Pixel Aspect Ratio 1LayerEffects Wave Warp #1 Wave Type #2 Frame   0 1 Effects Wave Warp #1 Wave Height #3 Frame   0 30 Effects Wave Warp #1 Wave Width #4 Frame percent  0 300 Effects Wave Warp #1 Direction #5 Frame degrees  0 90 Effects Wave Warp #1 Wave Speed #6 Frame pixels  0 1 Effects Wave Warp #1 Pinning #7 Frame   0 1 Effects Wave Warp #1 Phase #8 Frame degrees  0 0 Effects Wave Warp #1 Antialiasing (Best Quality) #9 Frame   0 1 End of Keyframe Data​​​​​​Adobe After Effects 9.0 Keyframe Data Units Per Second 29.97 Source Width 1920 Source Height 135 Source Pixel Aspect Ratio 1 Comp Pixel Aspect Ratio 1LayerEffects Grow Bounds #1 Pixels #2 Frame   0 30 Effects Wave Warp #2 Wave Type #2 Frame   0 1 Effects Wave Warp #2 Wave Height #3 Frame   0 30 Effects Wave Warp #2 Wave Width #4 Frame percent  0 440 Effects Wave Warp #2 Direction #5 Frame degrees  0 60 Effects Wave Warp #2 Wave Speed #6 Frame pixels  0 1 Effects Wave Warp #2 Pinning #7 Frame   0 5 Effects Wave Warp #2 Phase #8 Frame degrees  0 0 Effects Wave Warp #2 Antialiasing (Best Quality) #9 Frame   0 1 End of Keyframe Data- Warren

Julia221184797dj9 · Answer

HiWarren,Thank you so much for taking the time to answer this and send me your settings for the effect. I guess I am still wondering why AE seems to be apply the warp effect to eachstripe individually? You can really see how it’s doing that in the second clip you sent me. Why is the image not treated as a single 1920x1080 image?