Sapphire Warp Puddle | Create Bass Ripples (Tutorial)

Adding impact effects to your video edits is a great way to make any video hit harder. When you download the sapphire suite, you receive a collection of great plug-ins that work in After Effects and Premiere Pro. One of my favorite plug-ins included in this suite is called Sapphire Warp Puddle.

S-WarpPuddle

This plugin is extremely unique and easy to use. I’ve seen many recent video edits that include a lot of warp types of effects. This plugin fits perfectly into that category. With a little rotoscoping, dragging and dropping, the impact this effect has on footage is instantaneous.

I prefer to start my effect by duplicating my background layer and rotoscoping the subject on the top layer.

I then drag and drop the S_WarpPuddle plugin onto my background layer. The effect becomes immediately visible. The next step is animating the effect by using keyframes.

Plugin Settings

I typically only tweak the Amplitude, Frequency, Center and Outer Radius settings within the plugin. To do this, I set base values at the first frame in my video, usually minimizing the effect. Towards the end of the clip, I change the values as much as I want while creating new keyframes.

Amplitude controls the speed of the ripple. Frequency controls how many ripples. Center XY controls where the ripples happen. Outer Radius is how big the ripple effect becomes.

I usually play around with the inner and outer softness settings once I have the effect key framed. To make this effect even more cohesive, I add some RSMB on top of my background layer to give the ripples some motion blur.  If you have the Shake Sauce plugin, you can easily add an impact to emphasize the effect.

Tutorial

There are a lot of ways to use this amazing plugin. I cover how to use this plugin more in depth below in a quick video tutorial. Please feel free to drop a comment below if you have any questions. Hope you enjoy using this effect!