In this tutorial, we’re going to be covering how you can achieve a nice ‘glitchy twitch’ effect within After Effects without any 3rd party plugins or scripts. We will only be using the built in tools in After Effects as well as a few basic parenting expressions. After doing the ‘Breathe Life Back Into After Effects Lens Flares’ tutorial, I started to really like hooking things up with expressions and controlling them with a ‘Control’ layer, so we’ll be doing that again for this effect.
This method is great for people who don’t have plugins or scripts to do the job, for more info view this post. We will discuss how to split the RGB channels up, create a nice glitchy slide effect, as well as create some ambient flickering lights and blurs. Remember to tweak, tweak, and tweak your parameters as it’s all about getting things to look and flow right. Here are some additional tips and enhancements you can add to this technique:
Twitching in 1 Axis/Direction
To twitch in 1 axis or direction, you need to modify the wiggle expression for the Position of the RGB layers.
For an example:
This is our default wiggle expression:
wiggle(5, thisComp.layer("Control").effect("Slide Amount")("Slider"))
This expression applies to all axis of our layers (X, Y, and sometimes Z if it’s a 3D layer)
If you want to limit the twitch to only 1 axis or direction, you need to limit the wiggle expression to 1 axis or direction. We must define each axis now that we’re trying to individually control them each.
Here’s an example:
[wiggle(5, thisComp.layer("Control").effect("Slide Amount")("Slider"))[0], transform.position[1]]
You must remember that the X axis is labeled [0], the Y axis is labeled [1], and the Z axis is labeled [2].
The first part of the expression has the wiggle expression applied to the X axis [0]. As you can see, the 2nd part of expression, the Y part, doesn’t have the wiggle applied, it just has transform.position[1], meaning it’s not going to change.
If you want to twitch only in the Y direction, don’t apply the wiggle expression to the X axis, apply it to the Y axis only. The expression would look like this:
[transform.position[0], wiggle(5, thisComp.layer("Control").effect("Slide Amount")("Slider"))[1]]
The X axis is staying still while the Y axis has the wiggle expression applied to it. Take note of the bracket numbers.
Blurring
You can try various blurs for the glitching effect, such as Directional Blur. Each blur will give you different results, some looking better than others depending on what you’re trying to do. You could also try creating a masked vignette blur, masking out a vignette for the Blur Adjustment Layer, making the animation only blur around the edges to make an interesting look.
Hopefully this tutorial was a little useful to you and I hope you enjoyed it. If you liked this tutorial, please leave a feedback comment down below to show some support! If you have any questions, ask them below and I’ll get to the as soon as possible.
Another great tutorial man! I’m tempted to try this out. I really like the glitch effect for some reason like all the glitch/twitch graphics in Battlefield 3 are awesome.
Thanks Robert! I agree, the twitching effect is a big trend going on right now, especially for abstract renders and game montages.
Was this inspired from BF3? I was wondering how to do this effect myself, glad you made a tutorial. I like the way it’s used in freddie wong’s BF 4 video as well
No, it was kind of just a random idea. I wanted to help people achieve an effect without 3rd party plugins. After much success from the Breathing Life Back Into the AE Lens Flare tutorial, I decided to approach another common effect, Twitch. Thanks for your support and comment though, greatly appreciate it! If you have any other ideas for an effect, let me know
Thanks for your reply. Two quick questions:
1) What are the most popular 3rd party plugins for achieving the same effect?
2) How do I go about achieving this type of twitch/distortion @ 0:51:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVGq5me393o&list=LLdgunFdnAR3zS8RqVqpTUBA&index=43&feature=plpp_video
Twitch by Video Copilot is the most popular plugin that very easily creates the effect. The 2nd ‘glitch’ effect can be done using images and making them animate on/off for 1 frame or so. Or check out Data Glitch on AEScripts.com
excelent
Thank you!
excellent tut…reeeeeeeeallllly helped…I have been working on a promo vid for a competitor in the OCCUPYstrength competition in Chicago…I had a vision…but couldnt TWITCH, unless I paid even more money, of course…for some 3rd party…so again…your efforts are VERY appreciated…I will post a link here when I am finished…so you can see what I learned
otherwise…my YouTube Channel is xCRUSHOWICZx…only a few vids there atm…but Im working on it…dang this is LONG…lol..thanks again…
-cK
Hey man, thanks for dropping by and leaving some feedback, greatly appreciate it! Thank you for the kind words, I’ll definitely be looking forward to seeing your work
Hey man sick tutorial -this is getting tweeted
Thanks for the support man!
This tutorial was perfect for a short project I wanted to do! I noticed that if some of the settings are tweaked, it almost looks like a “Grindhouse” sort of look to it (the project isn’t a grindhouse movie though, haha). I didn’t have enough money for Twitch, so I really appreciate the fact that you took time to make an effect like it. Thanks so much!
-Jim
Haha, very nice catch on that one Jim! Yes, this method is a interesting approach at recreating that Twitch effect too. Thanks a lot!
Superb ..
Thank you sir!
Hey Guy!
Nice Tutorial!!!
One thing: You set the your blending mode to screen, (negative multiply) but you´re using the RGB Model (additive color model) so its better to use the blending mode add to get the real result.
Like your page!
Cheers
Thanks, it gets a little too bright for my likings but whatever floats your boat!