Hey, what’s up everyone? This is Owen with Motion Array and in today’s
tutorial I’m going show you how to make a glitch effect. There's a lot of ways to achieve these types
of effects but the great thing about this technique is that it’s all driven by things
in After Effects so you don’t need to source footage. Alright, let’s get started. I’m going make a new composition and I’ll
call it “Glitch Effect”. Then, I’m going to make a text layer and
I’ll just type in “Glitch”. I’ll center this text to my composition
with the options in the “Align” panel... and now I’ll precompose my text layer by
going to “Layer > Precompose”. I’ll name this “Type” and then I’ll
hit okay. Now I’m going to set up my RGB channels
so that I can separate them out while glitching. So with the pre comp selected I’ll go to
Effect > Channel > Shift Channels. Then I’m going to duplicate my "Type" pre
comp twice so that I have three copies of it. You can duplicate with CMD + D on the keyboard. Now I just need to go into the Shift Channels
effect on each layer and change some settings. On my top layer in the “Take Red From”
drop down I’ll select “Red”. Then for the Green and Blue drop downs I’ll
select “Full Off”. This leaves just the red channel. Now I’m going to repeat the process on the
other two layers but one will be green and the other blue…. The last thing I need to do is set the blending
mode to Add on all three layers. Okay, so rather than hand keyframe the position
of these three layers to simulate the RBG separation, I’m going to add an expression. To set this up I’m going to create a new
Null by going to Layer > New > Null Object. I’m going to change the name to “Wiggle
CNTRL”… And then I’m going to go to Effect > Expression
Controls > Slider Control. Now you’ll see I have this effect with a
single value in it. If I change the value, nothing happens because
I still need to link the position of my 3 layers to it. So I’ll lock the Effect Controls panel so
that when I deselect my null it’s effects are still accessible. Then I’ll go to on of my type layers and
pull up it’s position with P on the keyboard. Then I’m going to “Option” click on
the stop watch so I can add in an expression. I’ll type “wiggle(20,” and then I’ll
grab the pick whip and drag it up to the Slider Control value. That adds that value into my expression. Now I’ll close my parentheses. So to explain this a little more clearly,
the wiggle expression randomly changes your values. The first value I typed, 20, is how many times
per second it changes your value. The second value, which in our case is linked
to the slider control, is how much it will change your value. So right now the slider control's value is
0 so nothing is happening... But if I change that slider’s value you’ll
start to see some separation... Now I need to add the wiggle expression to
my other two type layers. To do this I’ll highlight the Position property
on my layer that already has the expression, then I’ll go to Edit > Copy Expression Only. Then, I’ll pull up the position of my other
two type layers, highlight their position, and then I’ll paste with CMD + V. Now let’s place a few keyframes on our Wiggle
Cntrl. I’ll move my playhead to 1 second, set the
value of the slider to 1, and I’ll click the stopwatch to set a key frame. I’m also going to unlock my effects control
panel so it’s not stuck on my slider control. I’m going to add the rest of my keyframes
in the timeline. To access all the keyframes on a selected
layer you can hit U on the keyboard. So I’ll do that, and now I have access to
my slider control in my timeline. I’ll move my playhead 5 frames ahead and
change my slider’s value to… let’s say 40. Yeah, that looks good. I’ll go 5 more frames ahead and bring the
value back down to one. With these keyframes our separation will animate
in and out. Now I’ll add in some distortion. I’ll start by creating a new adjustment
layer by going to Layer > New > Adjustment Layer. I’ll change the name to Glitch. Then, with that layer selected I’ll go to
Effect > Distort > Wave Warp. In my Wave Warp effect I’m going to change
the Wave Type to Noise. Then I’ll change my direction to 0 to get
the distortion to be horizontal. I’m also going to crank up my wave width
to 4000. This will give me some bigger pieces in the
distortion. With all that adjusted, I’m going to add
some keyframes to the Wave Height. I’m going to place them in the same spots
as the Wiggle CNTRLs keyframes. My first keyframe I’ll set to 0. Then 5 frames later I’ll bump it up to 300
and for my last keyframe I’ll end back at 0. The last thing I’m going to do is add a
wiggle to this Wave Height. That way, I’ll always have a little bit
of movement in my type. So I’ll option click my stopwatch, and type
“wiggle(10,” … and then I’ll pick whip to the wiggle control slider and close
the parentheses. What I want to do now is transition my text
to say something else. To do that, I’m just going to cut to a different
text layer when my distortion is at it’s peak. The peak of my distortion is at 1 second and
5 frames. So I’ll move my playhead there … and go
into my Type pre comp by double clicking on it. Inside my pre comp I’m going to select my
type layer. Making sure that my playhead is in the correct
spot, I’ll go to Edit > Split Layer. This splits the selected layer into two separate
layers where the playhead is. So I’ll double click on the new text layer
to highlight the text and then I’ll type in something else…. Alright now I’m going to head back in to
the main comp. When I RAM preview now, it’s look pretty
much done. We could stop here but I want to show you
a few more techniques to really elevate the effect. The first thing I’m going to do is duplicate
my Glitch adjustment layer. With the duplicated layer selected I’ll
go into the Wave Warp controls and change the Wave Width to 1500. This will give me some variance in width in
my distortion, rather than all of it being the same size. Next, I’ll add a new adjustment layer. I’ll change it’s name to Noise… Then I’ll go to Effect > Noise and Grain
> Noise. In the effect controls I’ll change the amount
of noise to 30%. With the added noise, the look is really coming
together. The last thing I’m going to do is add in
some tiny black lines to make it feel like we’re looking at the type through a screen. So I’ll create a new solid by going to Layer
> New > Solid. I’m going to make it black… and make sure
it’s Comp Sized…. then hit okay. Then I’ll go to Effect > Transition > Venetian
Blinds. In the effect controls I’ll change the transition
completion to 95%…. the direction to 90 degrees…. and the width to 5. This will give me some nice, thin lines. In the layer toggles I’ll check this little
box that has a T over it. This is the “Preserve Underlying Transparency”
toggle. This means my black lines will only show up
where the layers below it are. And with that, I think we’re done with the
glitch effect. Before we wrap this thing up I want to mention
that this effect isn’t just for text. You can apply this to footage or anything
really. Over in this other comp I have the exact same
set up, I just put images in my pre comp, rather than text and it’s working great. So you can see this is a really versatile
effect. Well guys I hope you found this tutorial helpful. If you did, there’s plenty more tutorials
for After Effects and Premiere over at MotionArray.com. Thanks for watching and see you in the next
video.
