Fun with Displacement Maps.

This clip is variations on the same theme. Essentially what is happening here is that the quicktime movie of the fish in the background is being used as the displacement map on a plane being drawn in different modes.. as points, as linestrip, as quads, and as polygons. The quicktime is also mapped on to the plane. Compose fx are used on the scene output, and the color difference you see between the 3L object and the background is due to the transfer mode, as well as the alpha choices for the object.

What is important to note here is that the DISTORTION SLIDE parameter is set to 30% in order to slow down the motion of the displacement map. This results in the "flowing" motion of the displacement of the plane as the fish are moving.

So what you are seeing here is not a 2d core image fx, but instead displacement and texturing being applied to a 3d object which is a plane, and that plane is poistioned above the background quicktime. So the displacement effect follows the motion of the fish.

Music is "Mute As a Fish" from the austrian electronic artist Lichtenberg. These clips were created and rendered in reatime using the built in dvr in thrill.artificialeyes.tv at 320x240 pixels in the motion jpeg a codec at lossless settings. The uploaded clip is an mp4.