Wave warp pixelation/stepping

[jonc5650072]

Hi,

I have added the wave warp effect onto a 2pt stroke and synced this to the audio output of a soundtrack. The effect is causing serious pixelation on the line, even though antialiasing is on high and the line should be continously rasterizing.

Any help would be appreciated!

[Mylenium]

I'm not clear what you are expecting. Your wave width is set to 2300 pixels, which is simply insane and presumably wider than your comp. Of course this will cause quantization issues. Those effects aren't meant for producing these kind of large graphical waves. If you need that, you have to use other techniques and effects. Switching the project to 16 bpc might improve things a bit, but even that may not suffice.

Mylenium

[jonc5650072]

Hi Mylenium,

Thanks for your reply! I was only assuming it were possible as most AE effects applied onto a shape (or line) seem to be scalable and rasterize correctly. I did try and switch the project to 16bpc but this didn't seem to solve the problem. The best solution I found was to apply motion blur and a CC vector blur, this doesn't get rid of the pixelation but rather hides it to the eye instead.

Thanks,

Jon

[ekreidler]

What other effect would you suggest to do a simple large sine wave? (And don't say turbulent displace -- I want an even sine wave)  It's ridiculous that this isn't scalable! This has messed with us on two jobs now. How about effects that distort the shape layer vector? It's frustrating to hear "how can you expect this to work" when it's a pretty darn basic thing.

[ca73650305]

Pretty rude and completely useless response, anyone have any suggestions for fixing this? Or Mylenium maybe you can offer some suggestions of the other techniques / effects you refer to?

[kevinh15683573]

I have the same issue, it's sad we can't use large value's.

I'm working a typography project and got a different solution, that almost does the job for me. This only works, when the stepping appears on the edges.

I added a Simple Choker, with a certain negative value; -5 in my case (just do it until the steps are not visible anymore).

Then I duplicated this Simple Choker and changed the value from negative to positive (5). Otherwise you end up with an expanded version of your shape.

The only issue with this technique is that is rounds all corners, which might not be ideal.

[felipejtavares]

Great! Worked for me, simple choker! I Love You! s2

[Jared25414603emdc]

This is great! Simple Choker worked for me too. I just had to create a precomp for my shapes after and increase the size so that it didn't lose parts of my shapes around the edges of the composition. 

[Chanjai251948449x8c]

this is the worst comment ever. No solutions, just to blame...

[deroo.marie]

@adobe

We are now 3 years later and this problem still exists!!!

half the world uses your programs, and pay for them  SOLVE IT ALREADY!

please

[Warren Heaton]

To get smooth edges, you'll need work around the hierarchal rendering order of After Effects.  In this case, it's the Wave Warp effect rendering after the Shape Layer rather than before.  Reminder: the hierarchal rendering order is reflected in the order we see items stacked inside a layer, so Contents happens before Effects which happens before Transform.  It would be great if After Effects could speak up and say, "Hey, for what you're trying to do, you'll need to tell me to do it in a different order."

Add a Fill to your Shape Layer and hide the Stroke.

Make sure that the Comp Frame Size is large enough that the Shape Layer is not cropped by any of the edges of the Comp.  If needed, expand the Comp Frame Size such that the Shape Layer never clips.

Then, while the Shape Layer is selected, choose Layer > Auto-Trace.  The settings pictured below should get you a close match to the warped shape, but of course feel free to adjust them.

The most important setting is "Apply to new layer".

How long it takes to complete depends entierly on how powerful your computer is.

Now apply the Stroke effect (Effect > Generate > Stroke).  Be sure to set "Paint Style" to "On Transparent".

Now that the Wave Warp is effectively happening before the Stroke, you'll see a smooth, anti-aliased edge.

[LizzardBlueberry]

Amazing reply and solution. Thank you!

[EpicSteve]

Maybe not the best solution, but I duplicated the wave warp effect, halved the wave amount and offset the phase slighty. This essentially halved the amount of stepping I was experiencing. You could possibly do this a few times until the problem isn't visible?