The Digital Matte Painting Handbook

Animated Lava

The river of lava on the ground plane will look more ominous when it’s animated. To do that, you’ll use an animated fractal noise pattern tinted to look like molten lava and combine it with the existing ground-plane painting. Select the GroundPlaneProjection layer, which the spotlight uses to project the ground-plane image, and precompose it. Name the new comp GroundPlaneProjectionComp. Double-click the new comp to open it in the viewer.

Adding a Fractal Noise Effect

Create a new white solid the same size as the comp, and name it MovingLavaSolid. Choose Effect ⇒ Noise & Grain ⇒ Fractal Noise, and set the parameters as follows at frame 0 (Figure 15-65):

• Fractal Type: Basic
• Noise Type: Soft Linear
• Contrast: 160
• Brightness: 0
• Overflow: ...