Metaballs Animation in After Effects

Adjustment Layer

1. Double click the Amoeba layer to go inside the Precomp.
2. Go up to Layer > New > Adjustment Layer.
3. In the Effects & Presets panel, type in Gaussian Blur.
4. Drag Gaussian Blur onto the new Adjustment Layer.
5. Set Blur to 50.
6. In the Effects & Presets panel, type in Simple Choker
7. Drag Gaussian Blur onto the Adjustment Layer.
8. Set Choke Matte to 50.
9. Now, type Roughen Edges in the Effects & Presets panel.
10. Set Border to 25.
11. Make sure Edge Sharpness is at 1.
12. Set Fractal Influence to 0.

Layer Modes

1. Shift-click on all the Blob layers.
2. If not already visible, turn on Layer Modes by clicking Toggle Switches / Modes on the bottom of the layer stack.
3. Set the Layer Mode of all the Blob layers to Screen.
4. Click on Main Comp at the top of the layer stack to go back to the main composition.
5. With the Playhead at the origin, hit Spacebar to playback the animation.

Video Transcription

This is Tziporah Zions from Noble Desktop. And in this tutorial, I'm going to show you a mix of metaballs animation and after effects. Meta balls refers to these blobby spherical shapes over here there are whole things that they can meld together, one near each other, make versatile tools for modeling organic shapes, and the most known for how they resemble cell division biology.

We're going to be using a combination of body blur, simple choker and rough and edges all on an adjustment layer. We're really just combining a few effects and all settings to get the look that we want here. So you can see this is what the project looks like when we're done. This is a fun technique for making shapes.

Look lobby. It is for any animation that could be more organic melded together. Look, science pieces, liquid animations, even melding together. Texture is also a good way to learn how to use simple chocolate and combine effects together. We won't be using anything special, just new shapes. Here you can find this product files, everything set up and finish your description below.

So let's get started. So this is what it looks like without any of those effects applied. And for those wondering the circles look like that because there's a regal passives effect added to them. So first thing we're going to do, double click inside the pre-count called Amoeba to head inside of it. And we're going to be making a new adjustment layer.

So let's talk to Layer New just one layer and automatically place on top of all these layers. But that's you want it on top of all these layers. So effects apply to an adjustment layer, apply to everything below it simply putting on a bunch of effects at once. So let's head over to effects. I'm going to put in Blur right over here.

Come on, come with me. Thank you.

This is for blurring objects as you might figure out. So let's put blurriness at 50 oh looks like accidentally put two of them on. There we go. And the next thing that we're going to be doing is simple choker and that's pretty important. So for choker put you on so simple choker is for expanding or shrinking the edge of a mat or in this case the objects appearance.

So this is a point blurred. But let's start with working on this effect over here. It's like 50 chocolate and simple choker. I'm putting it to 50. Wow, look at that. And you can already see that the edges are starting to look blobby. So let's see what it looks like so far. OK, so those two effects are quite important here.

The Blur and the choker together create that blobby effect. Well, we could do more over here. So let's add another effect. We're going to put in rough edges and I know what you're thinking. It says Ruffin in the name, but there's a way to use this that actually smooths out your shapes. So we're going to be the border and look to the border to 25.

It's going to be very thick. Ah, yeah, I know that it looks kind of crinkly, but let's put it sharpness so it sharpness like we want it all the way down. We want it about one and fractal influence we want that all the way. It's zero. So Fractal Influence is like, you know, how many ships do you want in your border up here and here and sharpness.

We want it quite low, but not so low as to be fuzzy. That's another look we would get. So one is this is a pretty good number for this now if you increase the sharpness we get point D, you know, between the two of us, increase these very pointy but pulling it back has the opposite effect. And this is just kind of a personal choice thing.

I want them to overlap with each other like their layers. I want their colors, not one. So if selected all my blobs, I'm going to go over to their layer most when screen and that's going to have them their colors are going to overlap. By the way, if you don't see this set up toggle switches and modes. Yeah, because if you see this, that's a bunch of other controls so we want your your modes visible.

All right. So like I mentioned before, this effect can be used that she was blobby amoeba. Like, look, it's good for merging shapes together in an organic kind of way. Bubble puddle, texture, shapes, anything that you want to animate, melding or splitting apart could benefit from this kind of technique. So that's all for this tutorial. I hope you've enjoyed learning how to make embeddable animation in Adobe After Effects.

This has been surprising for Noble Desktop.