The last of the layer types we’ll look at is Effects.
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Effects are rendering functions falling under two categories: Filters (alter shapes by manipulating pixels) and Shaders (add effects to the fill or stroke of a shape)
Pixelate
This filter redraws a layer using definable shapes, and with a limited colour palette. This effect, can of course, be animated which can give some interesting results.
Photo by Rohan Rangaswami on Unsplash
Place your image in the scene, go to the attribute editor, and click the + button next to filters. In the example above we have adjusted the pixel size property of the filter layer.
Halftone
Halftones use various sized dots to represent photographs or gradients. There are a number of options we can adjust in cavalry, such as the colour mode (RGB or CMYK) and softness which can help with smoothing the blending of high contrast sources.
In this example we have adjusted the halftone size property, which can give some cool abstractions.
Noise Shader
Finally, here’s an example of a Shader effect. This one gives us noise patterns in one of three types: Perlin, Simplex, and Cellular. Note that there is also a noise behaviour layer type which can be used to randomise deformations and values. Anyway, as you can see with this effect, we get a rastered texture applied to our object.
A Simplex Noise Shader in action with the frequency value being animated.
Starting with a super ellipse, we go to the attribute editor, and click to edit the Fill of this layer. Right click on the Shaders area of this panel to add the noise shader. Now you can edit the shader in the attribute editor – there are a large numer of properties to play with here to get the effect you want.
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It is possible to stack multiple effect layers. As ever, check out the documentation site to find out more about Effects
