Depth & motion mesh

What this group is for

This is the group you reach for when you want the audience to feel the surface, not just read it. Everything here treats the grid of cells as a sheet with mass and depth — something that can be pulled, rung like a bell, flown through, or shaken loose — so the register is tactile, hypnotic, a little uncanny. It is closer to a held breath than a cut.

Projects that lean on this: a title sequence that wants the image to assemble out of nothing, a music video where the frame ripples on the downbeat, a dream or memory passage where geometry refuses to stay obedient, a logo sting that needs one confident gesture of motion to land.

The effects

• fly-through — Per-cell depth read from luma: bright cells lean toward the camera while dim ones fall back, and animating cameraZ flies you straight through until the picture disassembles into a drifting field of cell-cubes. Good for a title that breaks apart as you push past it into the next scene.
• wave-blanket — A radial sine ripple spreads out from a focal point, lifting cells on each crest toward the camera and sinking the troughs, decaying as it travels. Good for a still portrait that suddenly breathes when a single word is spoken.
• blanket-shake — A single one-dimensional wavefront runs across the layer at a chosen angle like a sheet snapped taut, its damping shaping how far the disturbance reaches. Good for an impact beat where the whole frame flinches once and recovers.
• jelly-mesh — A tap-driven damped oscillator: an impulse keyframe triggers a wobble that rings down over time and fades radially from a focal point. Good for an interface or logo that reacts to a touch and settles like set jelly.
• cloth-drag — Static cloth deformation where a drag point pulls cells toward itself with a gaussian falloff while gravity sags every cell downward by its row. Good for fabric, a banner, or a hanging photograph caught mid-tug.
• char-arrival — Cells fly in from or out to depth: animate progress from 0 to 1 to assemble the picture from scattered cells, or 1 to 0 to disassemble it toward the camera. Good for an opening reveal that coalesces from dust, or a closing shot that scatters into the lens.

How to reach for it

Find these in the effects tray under the Depth & motion mesh group. Any of them can be gated by a mask layer so the deformation only happens where it earns its keep — ripple just the surface of the water, fly through only the centre, shake the banner and leave the wall alone.