- Posts: 37
- Joined: Wed Sep 12, 2018 10:54 pm
- Location: Inglewood, CA
- Real Name: Shayne Paul Rivas-Shiells
There are a few ways to create looping animations, depending on the content. Probably the simplest is to download the stx_tools collection from Reactor and use stx_Loopzilla, which does a relatively simple optical flow-based cross-dissolve.
If your animation is FastNoise based, I posted a little tidbit a few weeks ago about using the FastNoiseTexture tool and rotating it. A FastNoise's Seethe is based on a 3d noise field through a planar slice on the Z-axis (toward or away from the camera.) If you instead rotate the FastNoise based on a pivot point well outside the sampling plane, you'll get a loop when it comes back around to 360 degrees. This is, I believe, how Adobe's FractalNoise filter works.
If it's difficult to detect an inflection point (the spot at which stuff changes direction), you can just ping-pong it with a TimeStretcher.
If your animation is based on sliding textures, then you can activate the Mirror or Repeat edge mode on a Transform, slide it so you can see both the horizontal and vertical seams, then paint a smooth transition over them. Be careful—scaling might not work like you expect since the canvas will be filled with repeats of the image.