HairLines plug-in

HairLines is designed to produce random lines. Squiggly flowing lines, straight lines, lines with no end, lines with two ends. Lines are used by broadcast designers for various types of effects, and to add a visually interesting element in a composited piece. While these lines are generally easy to create, animating them can be somewhat tedious. HairLines allows you to easily create lines and animate them without spending much time sweating the details.

 

HairLines plug-in.

 

 

How it Works

The secret behind the HairLines is its grid. The grid allows you to set up where the lines are and what they look like. It's all about setting up the grid, telling the lines to ignore or follow it, and how they should behave in doing so. HairLines isn't technically a particle system. However the lines are affected by ripples, which behave similar to particles as they move through and distort the lines.

In fact, you could say that the other secret behind HairLines is its ripples. Ripples define the characteristics of a line just as much as the line characteristics do. The lines and ripples have various attributes that can vary from line to line or ripple to ripple, and the Randomness controls are very helpful. With HairLines, there are many ways to get different looks out of simple lines.

 

The lines have a high Size and low Frequency.

 

The orange lines have a low Size and high Frequency.

 

 

Grid group

This section allows you to determine where the line particles sit against a typically invisible, underlying grid. Go to the Grid page for details.

 

 

Lines group

This section controls some of the behavior of your line particles by setting the type of line or the lines' visual properties. Go to the Lines page for details.

 

 

Lines With Ends group

The controls in this section allow you to specify a line length and allow the lines to grow. Go to the Lines With Ends page for details.

 

 

Ripples group

Ripples are at the heart of this plug-in. They are responsible for the look of the distortions and the way the filter behaves. Learning how to control the ripples is essential to making the most of HairLines. Be careful how you set up these controls. A high Frequency and large Size can result in glacial render times, especially if you have a lot of lines or very thick lines.

 

 

 

Ripples> Frequency, Randomness

Determines how many ripples the lines are affected by. You could also almost refer to this parameter as 'number of ripples'. That's not totally accurate, but it comes pretty close to what happens when Frequency is adjusted.

The higher this percentage, the more turbulent the line will look, due to the increase in the number of ripples. This is really just relative to the line. 0% still results in some ripples, but they're very smooth and far between. Cranking this up to 100% causes the line to be very chaotic, with many peaks and valleys, and ripples that are very close together. If you want to create something that looks like the audio waveform of someone speaking, set this very high. If you're trying to create something that looks like a sine wave, set it relatively low

 

Left to right, Frequency of 10, 60 and 95. As you get close to 100, ripples really become pronounced.

 

 

Ripples> Size, Randomness

Increases the height of the peaks of the ripples, and depths of the valleys. Similar to a magnitude control which sets the scale along the Y axis.

The higher the setting, the wider the ripples.

 

Left to right, Size at 10, 45 and 100. By combining changes in Frequency, Size, and Turbulance, you can get a wide range of line distortions.

 

 

Ripples> Speed, Randomness

Controls how fast the ripples move through the line. The higher the number, the faster they move. This is essentially what causes the lines to wiggle and change shape. If you want the lines to appear to move in slow motion, set Speed really low. If you want to create lightning, set it very high.

 

 

Ripples> Turbulance, Randomness

Increases the amount of distortion in the lines. Turbulence doesn't increase the number of ripples but it makes the ripples much more distorted. You will notice little ripples on the main ripples (that were created by the Frequency parameter). The main ripples aren't really affected, but an extra level of distortion is added as this is increased.

The higher you set this, the more 'sub' ripples occur on the main ripples, and the more chaotic and distorted the lines will look. If you want really smooth lines, set Turbulance to its minimum value. For chaotic, crazy looking lines, crank up Turbulance.

 

Turbulance increases the detail that occurs on the lines. Left to right, a low value, a medium value and a high value moves the ripples from smooth to rough.

 

 

Ripples> Affect pop-up

Controls whether the ripples affect just the horizontal lines, the vertical lines, or both.

Affect is important when used with the Lines> Distortion parameter. If the ripples don't affect both Vertical and Horizontal lines, the lines that are affected will cause distortion in the lines that cross them. The amount of the distortion the crossing lines cause is determined by the Distortion parameter.

Affect and Distortion are useful when you want one set of lines to be the sole source of distortion for the other set of lines. The ripples distort one set of lines (say, the vertical lines), and then the vertical lines distort the horizontal lines that cross them.

 

 

 

Ripples> Randomness Seed

The number that is used to generate any random numbers. If you want a slightly different look to your animation, try changing Randomdess Seed. It will change the values around, make the ripples behave differently, and tweak any parameter that uses randomness. Animating this parameter can create interesting effects.

 

 

Displacement group

This section turns the lines into a displacement map, allowing the lines to distort the underlying image. The three parameters act together like a displacement filter.

 

 

 

Displacement> Angle of Displacement

Sets the direction that the original pixels are pushed around.

 

 

Displacement> Amount of Displacement

Sets how much the lines should be displaced by.

 

 

Displacement> Soften

Blurs the lines and eliminates the hard edge.