Moving right along. We're very close to the end of this effect,
but we need to add some more interest to the background here.
We have only added just some gradients basically.
Let's make this a little bit more interesting and give it
a few more Signature Retro 80s Vaporwave Effects.
First of all, we got to put a gradient here.
A grid is a signature element of this look.
Let's just go up to layer new solid.
I'm going to make this a square solid.
I'm just going to go ahead and make it 2,000 by 2,000.
I'll name this, grid.
The color doesn't really matter.
We'll click "Okay", and then add the grid effect.
So generate grid.
Then I want to change the size from to a width slider,
because that just makes it easy to scale it up or down.
We can always adjust this if we don't like the size.
But we'll say that grid size is good for now.
I just want to drag that grid down below basically everything but the background.
Before I go any further, I'm going to pre-compose it,
Control Shift C, and we'll name this grid.
This time I don't want to leave the source attributes in this comp.
Because what that will do is pre-compose the solid,
but leave the effect on this layer here in this comp.
Instead, I want to move all the attributes to the new composition and click "Okay".
One problem with that is that it made that pre-comp the same size as this comp.
Let's go back into that grid pre-comp,
go to the composition settings and change it to be 2,000 by 2000.
Click "Okay", and there we go.
Now that grid lives in a pre-comp and we can decide what we want to do with it here.
Well, I know that I want to offset it in 3D space so that it looks
like it's basically a floor underneath all of this text.
The easiest way to do that is just to enable the 3D layer switch.
I'm going to do that, and then I'm going to rotate it on the x-axis.
I could open up the rotation and change the x rotation,
but there's this handy little grip right here on the 3D Gizmo.
If you just click and drag it,
then you can rotate it freely in a 3D space.
Let's make it about that angle.
But again, we're using a scene default camera that doesn't have much perspective.
Let's add a new camera.
Go to layer, new, camera.
Again, let's use the preset of 24 millimeters and click "Okay".
You can see how drastic the perspective shifts just by changing the camera type.
Now I'm going to scale this grid down just a little bit.
We'll call that good. Maybe move it down a little bit on the z-axis.
We need to change the color. I don't want it to be white,
I want it to be probably a Tealish color.
Let's add in a fill effect,
bring that to the grid and change it to being this,
let's say, probably that color right there.
Something nice and bright.
Tealish, the little bit of green.
Click "Okay", and then let's make it glow.
I'm going to duplicate it and I'll rename it, grid glow 1.
Zoom in nice and close,
add a fast box blur.
Blur it out just a tiny little bit,
so we've got a little bit of a glow.
Make sure the blend mode is set to add,
and then duplicate it.
Blur that duplicate out even a little bit more.
That's pretty nice.
Why don't we make the center of it look a little bit hotter,
just like we did with the neon text up here,
and change the fill from being the super saturated teal to being a little bit more white.
That way it looks like a brighter light source.
That's looking pretty good.
Next, I want to isolate this and basically
feather it out so that we're not seeing the hard edges.
We could make this grid expand the entire width of the comp.
I could just grab all three of those,
scale it up so that in the back there we can see that it extends beyond the comps width,
and then maybe shift it down a little bit,
so the horizon line is a line to the center of the comp.
Then maybe I'd go into the grid,
adjust the grid to be much smaller,
and maybe even change the border down to say,
three instead of five.
Now it looks like we have more of a floor.
But I actually want to isolate it a little bit
more and feather it out so it's not so distracting.
I want the focus to be on the text here.
I'm going to move that grid back up a little bit.
I don't mind the size being smaller.
But I also want to move it back in Z space.
I'm going to grab this green Y handle.
You see as my mouse hovers over it, it switches to a Y.
If I click and drag,
then I can basically just shift it back like a floor.
I want to line up that anchor point to where the text is.
That way I know that whatever I do in this comp,
the center of this is aligned with where the text is in this comp.
Let's go back into that grid comp.
I basically just want to isolate and feather out the center of this layer.
Now, with the grid effect applied,
masks do not work,
so I actually need to use a matte layer.
I'm just going to duplicate this one with Control or Command D,
delete the grid and then add a circular mask.
Grab your ellipse tool,
click and drag while holding Control,
as well as the Shift key to make it a perfect circle.
Doesn't have to be perfect,
but that's what I'm going to try.
Then press "F" on the keyboard to bring up the mask feather and really feather that out.
Then I just need to switch the grid's track matte to
be an Alpha matte of the layer above it,
and now I'm isolating it to just that circle.
Let's take a look at how that looks in this comp.
That looks pretty cool.
It's still a little too big so I could scale the mask down,
but instead, I think I'm going to grab these three layers and just scale them down.
That's looking pretty good.
I'm going to shift it back on the Y axis a little bit and
just scale it up a little bit more and play around with the position.
Now that feathering is probably a little too extreme so let's go back in
the grid and turn that mask feather down to around 300.
I think that looks a little bit better.
We've just got this isolated area underneath
the text and we can adjust this however we want.
If I wanted this to be a little bit flatter on the front,
just bring that back.
You can play with this to your heart's content,
making the grid look however you want.
But now let's take a look at how it's going to come in,
how it will transition in.
Because I don't want it to be there before the text is.
I'm going to switch to half resolution so this renders more quickly.
Let's say when it gets right about there,
is where I want the grid to appear.
I'm going to grab those three layers,
press the left bracket to snap the endpoints to the play head.
Then I need a transition of that grid in somehow.
I'm going to do that in the grid comp just to make things easier,
and I think I'm going to use a very simple technique.
I'm just going to use the mask expansion property in this mask matte layer.
What this does is basically shifts the bounds of your mask in either direction.
I can back this up to where we don't see any of the grid,
want to make sure I go far enough to where we truly don't see anything.
Add a key frame on the mask expansion,
and then go forward maybe two seconds,
three seconds, and then set that expansion back to zero.
Now it's just going to animate out.
Just for good measure, I'm going to easy ease
into this key frame pressing the F9 key on the keyboard.
It's just going to softly fade in,
growing from the center out as that text is resolving.
Now that might be taking a little bit too much time.
It could probably start a little bit sooner.
Why don't we bring these back to about here?
That grid starts animating on sooner.
Then let's have it resolve right around
the time that the text is coming in at the foreground. Right about there.
If I double click, After Effects will bring me into
that comp in the same point in time as the main comp.
I'll just grab that key frame,
hold down Shift to snap to my play head,
and now it just animates in a little bit more quickly.
Let's just play that back.
There we go. Very nice.
Make sure that you preview this at full resolution
so you can see exactly what those lines look like.
Because at half resolution,
they get a lot more transparent.
Just always check every so often at
full resolution if you're doing little details like that.