Tiago's Weblog Code & Technology Aficionado – Come for the Flash, stay for more!

AE: Cardiogram Effect

Things you need:

creativity

Now you're asking. For what should I use a cardiogram??
Let's see.. maybe to show it on a small screen in your movie, as background animation, just as an add-on.. there are many ways to use it. Free your Mind!

Let's get to work

Step 1:
Create the waveline in Photoshop or Illustrator, here you can see my picture as a reference. Use it for your project or create your own. I personally recommend you to create your own, there is a bigger learneffect if you do so.

Step 2:
Create a new composition in AE with a size of 320x240 and a length of 2 seconds.
We will now import the waveline we've done in photoshop in after effects, to do so just do a rightclick in your project window and choose Import -> File.

moving on, Turn off the eyeball Icon so that the layer becomes invisible, the eyeball icon is located on the left side of the timeline beneath the layer.

Now create a new Solid with a black background and apply the Vegas effect (it can be found under: Effect - Render)

Now we will gone set some parameters, you can either use my settings or try on your own.

As you see I've chosen as Input layer the image we created before and I've inverted the input. otherwise the line would flow in the wrong direction
Please notice that I've also animated the rotation parameter. If you scrub around you will see what it does
Just create a keyframe at the beginning and one at the end to animate the rotation.

Step 3:
As an eyecandy we will put some glow to the flowing line, here my settings

What do you think? Does it look nice?

Step 4:
To make it a little bit more realistic we'll put a grid as a background.
There are 2 way to make it.

1. Create a grid in Photoshop, import into AE and put it between the Black Solid and your picture, and apply a HardLight trasnfer mode to the Black Solid layer.

2. Create a White Solid and apply the FE Griddler Plugin from FinalEffects with these settings.

NOTE: In the meantime with version 7 there already grid plugins available without having to buy an expensive Plugin package

Place that new solid between the black solid and your Picture and apply the HardLight mode to the Black Solid Layer.

We're done with it, apply some cool soundeffect to it or add some other nifty stuff..
As always please play around with your settings. There are many more possibilities to increase this effect.

Have fun with those Cardios, and watch out for the Heartattack

Tiago