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Filed under: Motion Graphics •

Fractal Noise Tutorial

The Fractal Noise effect in Adobe After Effects has to be one of the beloved plug-ins among power-users for its ability to create everything from abstract backgrounds to realistic natural phenomena. Here are a pair of ideas (from our After Effects in Production book) for creating the former: a blocky pattern, and a soft blurry pattern that we like to use for a “lighting” effect. In Part 1 of this bonus tutorial, you will learn how we created these layers, and in Part 2 we’ll offer some tips on making the Fractal Noise effect and other sources seamlessly loop.

Loading Up

Click here to download a small .zip archive containing an After Effects CS3 project which contains these tutorials. As all of the imagery will be created using Fractal Noise, no source footage is necessary.

Part 1: Background Noise

Explore the [Fractal Noise Background] comp from the Fractal Noise * prebuilt folder in the Project panel. You can RAM Preview short sections if you like, or Shift+RAM Preview to render every nth frame (as set in the Shift+RAM Preview Options). It will take a few moments to render the whole thing; Fractal Noise is one of the slower plug-ins in After Effects. You’ll notice that because of the evolution of the effect, it may not look like it is animating much as the RAM Preview is being built, but it will look quite lively when it plays back at the full speed. You will recreate this composition in the following steps.

Fractal Blocks

Step 1: In the Project panel, open the folder MyComps. In it is a comp called [MyFractalNoise]; double-click it to open it. If you are working with a slower computer, set the comp’s Magnification level of 50% and to Half Resolution; these reduced sizes will speed up your work.

Step 2: Press Command+Y on Mac (Control+Y on Windows) to create a new Solid layer (or select Layer > New > Solid). Name it “FractalNoise_blocky”, and click the Make Comp Size button (640x480). Color the solid Black and click OK.

Step 3: With FractalNoise_blocky still selected, apply Effect > Noise & Grain > Fractal Noise. The default is a grayscale cloudy fractal pattern, as seen at right. We’ll change this to a blocky pattern, animate it slightly, and tint it blue. If you’re not familiar with the Fractal Noise effect, experiment with the Fractal Type and Noise Type popups, as well as the other parameters. Then click on Reset in the Effect Controls panel before proceeding.

Step 4: Make the following changes to the default settings:

• Set the Fractal Type to Threads, which is relatively low in contrast - we don’t want the background to be too overpowering.
• Set the Noise Type popup to Block, the only boxy pattern available. We want a digitized, mosaic-style look.
• Although the goal is low contrast, the image tends too much towards dark gray at this point. Boost the Contrast value to 170.
• To make the boxy pattern smaller, twirl open the Transform section and change the Scale parameter from 100 to 90. Your result should now look somewhat like the one above/to the right.

next page: tweaking the blocks

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