Sapphire Plug-ins for After Effects: KaleidoRadial

S_KaleidoRadial Simulates a traditional 2 or 3-mirror kaleidoscope. You see a pie-slice shaped piece of the source through the angle between the mirrors, and mirror-reflected copies of it in the rest of the image. Use the Slices parameter to control the how many copies of the source pie slice you see around the central point. In the Sapphire Stylize effects submenu. Inputs: Source: The current layer. The input clip to be warped. Mask: Defaults to None. If provided, the amplitude of warping is scaled by the values of this input clip. Gray values internally scale the warping amplitude rather than simply cross-fading between the effect and the original source to allow more continuous results at the mask edges and more detailed control over the warping amounts. This input can be affected using the Blur Mask, Invert Mask, or Mask Use parameters.

Parameters:

Load Preset: Push-button .
Brings up the Preset Browser to browse all available presets for this effect.

Save Preset: Push-button .
Brings up the Preset Save dialog to save a preset for this effect.

Mocha Project: Default: 0, Range: 0 or greater.
Brings up the Mocha window for tracking footage and generating masks.

Blur Mocha: Default: 0, Range: 0 or greater.
Blurs the Mocha Mask by this amount before using. This can be used to soften the edges or quantization artifacts of the mask, and smooth out the time displacements.

Mocha Opacity: Default: 1, Range: 0 to 1.
Controls the strength of the Mocha mask. Lower values reduce the intensity of the effect.

Invert Mocha: Check-box,  Default: off.
If enabled, the black and white of the Mocha Mask are inverted before applying the effect.

Resize Mocha: Default: 1, Range: 0 to 2.
Scales the Mocha Mask. 1.0 is the original size.

Resize Rel X: Default: 1, Range: 0 to 2.
The relative horizontal size of the Mocha Mask.

Resize Rel Y: Default: 1, Range: 0 to 2.
The relative vertical size of the Mocha Mask.

Shift Mocha: X & Y,   Default: [0 0], Range: any.
Offsets the position of the Mocha Mask.

Bypass Mocha: Check-box,  Default: off.
Ignore the Mocha Mask and apply the effect to the entire source clip.

Show Mocha Only: Check-box,  Default: off.
Bypass the effect and show the Mocha Mask itself.

Combine Masks: Popup menu,  Default: Union .
Determines how to combine the Mocha Mask and Input Mask when both are supplied to the effect.

Union: Uses the area covered by both masks together.

Intersect: Uses the area that overlaps between the two masks.

Mocha Only: Ignore the Input Mask and only use the Mocha Mask.

Center: X & Y,   Default: [0 0], Range: any.
Center location of the kaleidoscope mirrors, in screen coordinates relative to the center of the frame.

Z Dist: Default: 1, Range: 0.001 or greater.
Scales the 'distance' of the entire result in or out from the Center. Increase to zoom out, decrease to zoom in.

Slices: Default: 6, Range: 0.01 or greater.
Sets how many slices the image will be broken up into. Each slice corresponds to the area between the mirrors in a traditional kaleidoscope. Turn this up to get a more abstract look, and down to get fewer, wider slices. Fractional numbers here will get you one fractional slice; for a fully symmetrical look, use integers (3, 4, 5, and so on).

Rotate: Default: 0, Range: any.
Rotates the whole pattern about the Center by this many degrees.

Rotate Kaleido: Default: 0, Range: any.
Rotates the kaleidoscope itself, without rotating the image under (or inside) it.

Rotate Inside: Default: 0, Range: any.
Rotates the image under the kaleidoscope about the Center, much like rotating the object box at the end of a traditional kaleidoscope.

Rotate Inside Speed: Default: 30, Range: any.
Auto-rotates the image under the kaleidoscope over time. This allows you to get a nice animated look even on a still background, much like a traditional kaleidoscope where you could rotate the object box at the end. In degrees per second.

Shift Inside: X & Y,   Default: [0 0], Range: any.
Translates or shifts the source image inside the kaleidoscope before it is reflected.

Kaleido Amount: Default: 1, Range: 0 or greater.
Adjusts the overall amount of distortion applied to the Source clip. Set this to zero to leave the source unchanged or to one for a normal kaleidoscope pattern.

Wrap: Popup menu,  Default: Reflect .
Determines the method for accessing outside the borders of the source image. This is used only if the image inside the kaleidoscope is not contained within the shape of mirrors.

No: gives black beyond the borders.

Tile: repeats a copy of the image.

Reflect: repeats a mirrored copy. Edges are often less visible with this method.

Filter: Check-box,  Default: on.
If enabled, the image is adaptively filtered when it is resampled. This gives a better quality result when parts of the image are warped smaller.

Opacity: Popup menu,  Default: Normal .
Determines the method used for dealing with opacity/transparency.

All Opaque: Use this option to render slightly faster when the input image is fully opaque with no transparency (alpha=1).

Normal: Process opacity normally.

As Premult: Process as if the image is already in premultiplied form (colors have been scaled by opacity). This option also renders slightly faster than Normal mode, but the results will also be in premultiplied form, which is sometimes less correct. If your image has sharp color changes where the matte channel also has sharp edges, you may get better results with Normal mode.

Mask Use: Popup menu,  Default: Luma .
Determines how the Mask input channels are used to make a monochrome mask.

Luma: the luminance of the RGB channels is used.

Alpha: only the Alpha channel is used.

Blur Mask: Default: 0.05, Range: 0 or greater.
Blurs the Matte input by this amount before using. This can provide a smoother transition between the matted and unmatted areas. It has no effect unless the Matte input is provided.

Invert Mask: Check-box,  Default: off.
If on, inverts the Matte input so the effect is applied to areas where the Matte is black instead of white. This has no effect unless the Matte input is provided.

Crop Input Parameters: Default: 0, Range: 0 or greater.
These 4 parameters, Crop Top , Crop Bottom , Crop Left, and Crop Right , allow selecting a rectangular subsection of the input image to be processed. If the Wrap parameters are set to "No" the exposed borders will be transparent. If the Wrap is "Tile" or "Reflect" the source image is wrapped on the new cropped borders to fill the frame. This can make it easier to avoid artifacts due to distorting an image with bad edges.

See Also:

KaleidoTriangles KaleidoSquares KaleidoDiamonds KaleidoOct KaleidoPolar

WarpPolar Sapphire Plug-ins Introduction