ENDA Episode 244 → The time when ENDA tells a little secret called: AnimBuddy (Part 1)

“Not all VFX artists are animators…”

It is a true statement.

But it is also true that, in visual effects, and especially in compositing, we often need to animate the values of our nodes to achieve certain effects or match the lighting in our plate.

The problem?

Well, animation takes time.

And good animation takes even longer.

But the key is this: in compositing, we do not always need a dedicated animation for every parameter.

Sometimes, it is enough to have a procedural animation that we can control easily and test directly on the plate.

And I know, I know…

You might think I am being delusional, hoping for something like that to exist.

But what if I told you that it does?

In the video below, you can see how a node called AnimBuddy does a lot of what we just described. You simply select the type of curve you want, then adjust the parameters to change the effect.

With just those changes, the flickering effect of the glow starts behaving differently. We can even make adjustments while the playback is running.

Small warning: this works with a light comp like this one. In bigger comps, the result will not play in real time.

It might seem that this node is ideal for small effects on images, but we still have not seen its full potential, or what happens behind its parameters.

But that will be for a future episode.

The journey continues...