Create a kaleidoscope pattern

- [Chris] In this lesson, we'll be creating a pattern from an image using the CC Kaleida Effect. Now, if you're following along, I'll be starting my kaleidoscope from the amsterdam.jpg file, located in folder one inside of the chapter two folder in the exercise files. However, I would also encourage you to use any image that you have, since this effect can make a great kaleidoscope from just about any image. So from the exercise files, I'll locate the amsterdam.jpg file. I'll drag that into the Project inside of After Effects. And then, just like we talked about in the introduction videos, I will create a composition by dragging the JPG file into the Composition panel. And then, with this selected, let's go to our Effects and Presets, and then, I'll come down here and search for K-A-L. This will bring up the CC Kaleida Effect inside of the Stylize group. And then, I'll apply this to the JPG file. And now, right away, you'll see that the effect is creating that kaleidoscope across the entire JPG area. So, the first thing we wanna do is come back to the Effect Controls and start playing with the settings. The settings, by default, have the center showing up in the center of the composition. The Size is set to 20, the Mirroring is set to flower, and the Rotation is set to zero. So what we wanna do is just come in here and start playing with these settings. There's almost an unlimited number of patterns that we can create with just these few properties. So first, let's take a look at the Center property. If we come in here and hover over the horizontal centering, and click and drag, I can increase and decrease the position there. And you'll see, on the composition, this shows up as a little target. And I can also come in here and just click on the target and drag it around. And if you're not sure what part of the image is being sampled from the center point, you can come back to the Effect controls, and you can disable the effect. So, if I click this icon here, this will take the effect away, and we can see the center point showing up here. So if I wanna change the center point so that we get more yellows and greens, I can drag this up to this area, and then come back and re-enable the effect. Next, you'll wanna come down and play with the Size. The Size is set to 20 by default, and this controls the size of the tiles. If we click on this and drag this down to create a lower number, you'll see that the tiles get much smaller, creating an entirely different pattern. And similarly, if we increase the size above 20, we'll get much larger tiles. Next, let's come down to the Rotation so we rotate the artwork that is showing up inside of the tiles. And this can also create some really interesting effects. And so, by adjusting the rotation, the size, and the center point, you can create all kinds of patterns from a single image. And the last property we'll take a look at is the Mirroring setting. So by default, this is set to Flower. But let's come in here and change this. So let's set this to Unfold, and to see how this pattern works, let's come down to the Rotation setting, and let's come in here and change the rotation. And this will give you a sense of how the tiles are being generated using the Unfold setting for Mirroring. So I'll come up here and grab the center point. Just move this around a little bit. Then let's go back to Mirroring. Let's change this Starfish. This is one of my favorites. Again, we'll come back to rotation. I'll move this around. I'll decrease the size. I'll move the center point around, just to get a nice warm yellowy green color here. And then, I'll go back and adjust the rotation again. Now, as you're playing with all of these settings, if you find any pattern that you like, what I would encourage you to do, is come down to the Timeline panel, select the layer, so I'll select amsterdam.jpg, and hit Command or Control+D to duplicate the layer. It'll be almost impossible to get back to a particular pattern that you liked earlier if you don't save it down here, because there's so many possibilities with these properties. So now that I've duplicated that file, I will hide the one in the bottom, and then, I'll come back here and just continue to make changes. I'll change to a different mirroring type, change my rotation, change my size, explore creating a pattern with these settings. If I like this, I'll come back to the Timeline panel again, duplicate that layer, select the top layer, and then, continue exploring more possibilities. So, there's almost a limitless number of patterns that you can create, just from a single image. And since we build a lot of web layouts, we use this feature to create a pattern, then we crop out a small tileable portion, then combine the small graphic with CSS to create a responsive design, so the pattern seamlessly flows to any size of the screen that's loading our design.