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Please have a look at my website solstice.co.il on a chrome browser. On the left you see a looping movie of the tree wobbling around. This was made by tweening the evolution filter of the turbulent displace filter in After Affects.

enter image description here

The problem is that because of the fractal nature of the effect, I could not find a way to seamless loop the animation, which led me to resort in an ugly cross-dissolve.

How can I create a more pleasing seamless loop with this effect?

update

I've redone the animation manually using the puppet tool, which is closer to what I wanted but not perfect, so the question still stands. The old animation for reference can be found here: http://solstice.co.il/videos/tree_old.webm

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  • Thanks for the suggestion. I tried reversing the animation - but the point of reversion looks very weird and artificial... – OpherV Jun 21 '15 at 13:06
  • You're suggesting to reverse the animation and put it back to back with the forward animation. This solution doesn't look so good because the point where the animation switches from running forwards to running backwards is very noticeable and jerky, in contrast to the smooth and subtle forward animation – OpherV Jun 21 '15 at 14:22
  • Yes. It works technically but it doesn't work visually. It's because the animation itself flips direction. So for example a branch that moves clockwise starts suddenly to move counterclockwise in the same velocity and that feels unnatural – OpherV Jun 21 '15 at 14:35
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In order to get a fluid and seamless loop, it's key to enable Cycle Evolution and move the last keyframe 1 frame beyond the end of the composition.

  1. Add the Turbulent Displace Effect onto the footage

  2. Open up Evolution Options

  3. Enable Cycle Evolution

  4. Go to the first frame in the timeline

  5. Click on the stop watch of the Evolution value:

    enter image description here

  6. Go to the last frame in the timeline and set the Evolution Times value to 1x, this is equal to 360 degree (one revolution)

  7. Move the second keyframe 1 frame beyond the end of the composition:

    enter image description here

Example

enter image description here

  • Composition length: 51 frames
  • First evolution keyframe value: 0x at frame 0
  • Second evolution keyframe value: 1x at frame 51

Note: This seems to work with all fractal effects.

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    I completely missed the hidden "evolution cycle" option! Thanks! – OpherV Jun 22 '15 at 16:39

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