Fractal Noise: fades & more

Harry Frank shares some secrets in his recent Fractal Noise Fade Effect video tutorial on a text transition in After Effects. He also used Fractal Noise in another tutorial, Text Effects with Set Matte. Here's Fractal Noise Fade on Vimeo (HD at Graymachine):



As a base to launch your own ideas Chris Zwar clearly explains (without video even) how the filter works in Fractal Noise - A New Look at an Old Friend on Creative Cow.

An alternative to this filter is the Turbulent Noise filter, an updated version of Fractal Noise, which creates smoother animations but doesn't doesn’t have Cycle controls to create seamless loops. One advantage of Turbulent Noise is that it is one of 3 GPU-accelerated effects in CS4.

The AE Help docs have more info and links to more techniques for noise. Yet more info on noise can be found in the Physics section of Trapcode Form's help and in Perlin Noise. But wait, there's more... tutorials on Fractal Noise.

The use of Fractal Noise for fog is discussed by Mark Christiansen in Climate: Air, Water, Smoke, Clouds in After Effects 7.0 a free excerpt from the book After Effects Studio Techniques. To create a seamless loop of animation using Fractal Noise, see Christiansen or After Effects Help.

Chris and Trish Meyer have a tutorial on techniques for using the After Effects filter Fractal Noise to create seamless background textures. An earlier video by Aharon Rabinowitz of Creative Cow also showed how to create seamlessly looping fractal background animations by using AE's Fractal Noise. Further, Dean Velez also showed how to use Fractal Noise in the Total Training course Advanced Adobe After Effects 7 Pro, and Chad Perkins had a similar treatment in his 2008 Lynda.com series After Effects CS3 Effects.