Moving water color effect: is there a better way?

The awesome filmer wrote on 5/18/2014, 4:06 PM
This is an attempt to create a "moving watercolour" effect using Sony Vegas pro 13.



I got the moving paint effect by placing an animated noise filter before the watercolor filter.

The Gaussian Blur and the unsharp mask were used to enhance an originally low res picture. I simply converted the 1920 * 1080 picture into 4000 * 2250 then cropped it into the 1280 * 720 project, which got rid of much of the enlarged pixels I had encountered before the resize.

Filters were used in this order:

GAUSSIAN BLUR
Horizontal range: 0.0100
Vertical range: 0.0100
Channels: All on

UNSHARP MASK
Amount: 0.347
Radius: 0.075
Threshold: 0.136

SONY ADD NOISE:
Noise level: 0.061
Animate: On
Monochromatic: Off
Gaussian noise: Off

BORIS BCC WATER COLOR:
Default settings.

So there you have it, a so so attempt at a moving watercolour effect!. Clearly there's room for improvement, if you know of a better way to do this, please tell me!

Comments

The awesome filmer wrote on 5/18/2014, 7:16 PM
Sorry to bump this thread, I forgot to put in the link to the film when I first posted it. This has been edited in now.
larry-peter wrote on 5/18/2014, 8:09 PM
An effect is successful if you achieved in portraying what you envisioned.

For my taste, the BCC Water Color default is simply posterization. If you have full BCC, you may want to take a look at putting the BCC Turbulence before the WC plugin, instead of noise. It will give movement to the color edges. Take the "lines" off the Cartoon section of the WC plugin and thicken the strokes.

Also, take a look at putting your untreated photo on a lower track and using the Water Color treated clip as a compositing element, setting its track to Overlay and reducing the opacity until you get a nice blend between the animated water color and the background detail. You could even take it a step farther and add a canvas or paper texture into the mix. Just a few other ideas to try.
The awesome filmer wrote on 5/18/2014, 8:47 PM
Hey, thanks Atom! I appreciate your help. DO you know of any free solutions?

Marco. wrote on 5/19/2014, 3:56 AM
Do you mean somthing like -> this?

This was made long time ago and entirely in Vegas Pro without using external plug-ins. I have a Vegas project file available adapted to Vegas Pro 12 (and newer).
Rory Cooper wrote on 5/19/2014, 6:37 AM
If you mean like melting

Then use track displacement = height map.
Use the same image for you height map and add bump fx on the height map.


if you want the veg to have a look = give me a buzz roryc@tsogosun.com and i will send a zip file vegas 10.it would be 12 if 12 was working properly maybe one day!
The awesome filmer wrote on 6/2/2014, 6:46 PM
Hi guys, I took the plunge and bought the genarts suite.

I now have a really cool brush effect, so I'm happy.

Here it is!