GridSquares plug-in

GridSquares was designed to make the animation of geometric shapes very easy. GridSquares simplifies the process of creating these shapes, making it easy to create sophisticated backgrounds without spending hours fiddling with a million keyframes.

By creating a particle system that is designed to do nothing but shapes, it is easy to customize the controls for particle-based squares and controlling their behavior. This gives you the ability to quickly and easily set up the animation and get the look you want. This ease is facilitated by Randomness controls that automatically randomize the appearance and behavior of shapes. They're really fun!

 

GridSquares plug-in.

 

 

How it works

In order to do its magic, GridSquares first sets up a grid, then draws the squares into the spaces between the rows and columns. You then tell the squares how they're going to look, how to behave, and how rigidly they're going to stick to the grid.

It's all about setting up the grid, then telling the Squares to get a little crazy, and ignore it. Of course, you can tell your Squares how to behave as well. The Grid itself can be set to any size, rotation, position, etc, and can be set up with any number of rows and columns. How you set the grid up is going to go a long way in determining how the animation is going to look, so make sure you have some idea of what you want to do, before you setting it up.

 

Colorful squares of GridSquares. The rows and columns define what a Grid Space is.

 

 

Grid group

This section allows you to determine where the GridSquares particles sit against a (typically) invisible, underlying grid. The grid is your key to directing the shapes initially.

 

 

 

Grid> Height, Width

Together, Height and Width set the size of the grid in pixels.

You need to be careful about Height and Width. If you set the grid size too small, the lines will go off the edge. If you set the grid size too large, the animation will be slowed down unnecessarily. For example, if the grid's Height/Width is bigger than your comp's height/width, you are telling GridSquares to keep track of squares you're never going to see. If you are going to move the grid Position or Rotation, the squares might move into view and then there is a benefit to a big Height and Width.

Grid size affects the rendering speed so don't make its Height/Width any bigger than you need it. If you just need a bunch of squares running across the width of the screen, at the top or bottom, don't make the grid the size of the entire comp. Just make it a 100 pixels high and however wide the comp is. This will save the extra hit on computing power that a large grid would have given you.

Keep track of how big your Producer Point is going to be as well. If you have a small Producer Point, it may not be necessary to have a large grid.

 

At left, the grid is small and doesn't cover the entire screen. The squares are the same size on both grids because Height/Width only affects the grid size.
At right, the Height and Width is 1000x1000 on a 640x480 layer.

 

 

Grid> Make Size Match Layer Size checkbox

Makes the grid match the size of the comp. If this is checked, then grid ignores the Height and Width values . If the Height and Width are 300 and 200 and the comp size is 640 x 480, turning this option on will make the grid size 640 x 480.

 

 

Grid> Position

Sets the center of the grid.

 

 

Grid> Rotation

Sets the rotation of the grid. This is different than rotating the squares themselves. If the grid is rotated, then all the squares (or whatever shape you've chosen) start off at an angle and the squares remain perpendicular to each other. It looks a bit like taking a stack of pizza boxes, turning the entire stack 30 degrees. Each box is still directly on top of the other boxes, in such a way that relative to each other, there is no rotation.

This is not the case with square rotation in Square Setup. This would cause each box to be rotated 30 degrees, independently of the other boxes, producing a different look.

 

An example of grid rotation vs square rotation. At left, the unrotated grid and squares. In middle, the grid is rotated. At right, Rotation attribute for the squares.

 

 

Grid> Rows, Columns

Together, Rows and Columns define what a 'grid space' is by defiining the division of the grid. You can see them by turning on the Show Grid parameter.

Make sure you turn on the Show Grid checkbox so you know what you're getting as you adjust the setup parameters. Show Grid will make setting this part up easier.

The squares are linked to the spaces between the rows and columns (or grid spaces). How many you have and how they're spread out due to the size of the grid will determine the structure of your animation. There are a variety of controls that determine how rigidly the squares stick to the grid spaces, but these divisions will set up the underlying foundation.

Rows and Columns act as the Squares on a Tic Tac Toe board. The squares are only allowed to appear between the Squares, just like X's and O's in Tic Tac Toe. If you have three rows and columns like a Tic Tac Toe board, the squares really only have 9 places to appear. There are ways to make the squares not follow the grid so strictly, and we'll go into those later.

Rows and Columns are not animatable since they're the underlying structure for the whole animation. Like any good foundation, the grid needs to stay stable. There are other ways to change the look of the animation but this grid has to remain the same throughout. Give careful consideration to what you're going after when you set these up.

 

Squares overlap when the square Height is larger than the Height of the grid spaces.

 

 

Grid> Show Grid checkbox

As you may have guessed, this checkbox visually displays the underlying grid. It is turned off by default. Turning it on can be very helpful in setting up your basic grid-related parameters.

 

 

Grid> Line Width

Sets the width of the Squares that Show Grid causes to be rendered. Very useful at half or quarter resolution, when 1 pixel line sometimes don't show up.

 

 

Producer Point group

The Producer Point area defines where the squares start at. It can be as small as a single pixel or as large as the entire grid area. The grid defines where the squares can go, and the Producer Point defines where they start on their journey. Consider the grid a range, and the Producer Point the home on the range. The Squares can go anywhere they want on the range, but they all have to start out back at home.

 

 

 

Producer Point> Position, Position Randomness

The position point determines where the center of the Producer Point is located on the grid. Again, you CAN position this off the grid, but Squares will only be created in the area that overlaps onto the grid. If no portion of the PP is on the grid, no Squares will be created.

 

Left to right, Producer Point is a large value and a small value

Producer Point> Height, Width

The Producer size is set in pixels by the Height and Width parameters. While you can set these numbers higher than the height and width of the grid itself, GridSquares is smart enough to cap the Producer Point size at the size of the grid. There isn't any point in having squares created outside the grid as there are no rows or columns for them to be created in.

If you have a large Producer Point, squares can be created anywhere within it. This creates a much different effect than if it's small, since in that case, all the Squares seem to be coming from the same point, and moving outward. If it's large, there is no central point, so Squares are created wherever, and head off in the direction (or directions) you have specified.

As long as the producer point touches a grid space, that grid space is capable of receiving squares. If we have a Producer Point that's 20x20, most likely it won't completely cover any grid spaces. However, it'll probably touch on 2 or 4 or them and all those will generate squares. A large area produces a much more random effect, especially if Random Squares is checked in the Square Setup section (we'll get to that next). You can also get some very different effects if Grid Space is selected instead of Pixel as the Unit. We'll go into the Unit pop-up in great detail shortly.

 

 

Square Setup group

This section controls some of the behavior of your shape particles, mostly for their movement and direction. Go to the Square Setup page for details.

 

 

Square Attribute group

Most of these parameters determine the length of time that the shape particles stay onscreen. Go to the Square Attribute page for details.

 

 

Color section

This section controls the color of Geomancy's shape particles. Go to the Color page for details.

 

 

Grid Adherence group

These controls determine how closely the squares stick to the grid. These parameters are in many cases tied into behavior parameters from other sections, as you will see in a moment.

 

 

 

Grid Adherence> Vert/Horiz Grid Adherence, Randomness

Sets the maximum number pixels that the squares will be allowed to stray off the grid. Once a square is created, it's given a GA value, which doesn't change. GA can be animated, but the value changes only affected newly created squares, not squares already visible. The Randomness parameter varies the amount that the line is off the grid, based on the Grid Adherance value.

This allows you go have your lines form a very obvious grid or make it look like they are totally random with no underlying structure.The lower the Grid Adherence amount, the more tightly they will stay to the underlying grid. If you turn on 'Show Grid' in the you'll be able to see the underlying grid and get an idea how the squares are positioned.

It doesn't matter how big or how many rows or columns the grid has. The squares will use the grid as a guide when they are produced. Unlike behavior in the GridLines plugin, the squares aren't constrained by the grid after they've been born.

Once they've been created, they're free to move in any direction they choose, unless Square Setup> Constrain Along Vertical and Square Setup> Horizontal Axis are checked.

In order to get the squares to stay put, you need to set the Speed parameter to 0, as well as the Growth Speed rates. All of these options are in the Square Attribute section.

It is possible for the squares to overlap, even if Grid Adherence is set to zero and speed is set to 0. If the squares are bigger than the grid spaces, the squares will overlap. As you can see in the sidebar, if the squares are smaller than the grid spaces, everything thing is nicely arranged. If the squares had been bigger than the grid spaces, you can see that there'd be a lot of overlap.

This might be an effect you want. However, just be careful when setting up the size of the squares and the size of the grid (and the number of rows and columns).

 

 

 

Grid Adherence> Grid Adherance Probability

Determines the likelihood of a square being off the grid. The higher the value, the more likely the squares will be pushed completely out of their spots on the grid.> If a square is striving to be off the grid, it has to get through the Probability parameter first. If it gets past that, then it has to get an amount determined.

The amount a square is off the grid is determined by [Grid Adherance] * [Grid Adherance Randomness] (unless Randomness is zero). Of course, Randomness varies from square to square, so there's no precise way of know this unless Randomness is 0.

 

At left, Grid Adherence at 0. At right, Grid Adherence at 50.