Apple Motion: Creating 2D wave texture

Great, thanks for the info.

I am trying to do two more things. I came up with my own way of making a few foams for an ocean wave, but I need to make the top more "connected" (basically one very large blob) and then making the bottom become more and more granular with smaller blobs.

I also want to add a gradient to the entire thing, where the top is near 100% opacity (all white) and the bottom is more of a transparent white.

This is really just a cloud generator in a custom shape mask with a few filters.

Any tips? You have been very helpful in some basic guidance! :)

Update (again):

Thanks for the response. I think I was typing at the same time as you. Apologies about that!

My issue isn't really the "middle" portion of the water. I'm trying to create moving waves.

I am sorry, I should have been clearer.

I am trying to make one singular wave that uses this clouds generator. That's why my photo has a blob of cloud generators in a mask. It's going to be a wave moving on a Motion Path.

Here's my image with an overlay — mind the pink. See my blob? It's one wave. I want the "top" (front if you were a person standing on that beach) to be more concentrated with bigger clouds, basically the whole thing a more opaque, single white piece. I then want the "bottom" (back of the wave again if you were actually standing on that beach) to have finer and less cloud generations.

That's why I'm struggling, because I cannot figure that portion out.

At the front part of the wave, it's stronger, so it needs to be more opaque with basically one giant part.

At the back part of the wave, it's weaker, so it needs to be more transparent with a few little parts.

I'm animating this wave moving in. I have been trying for a long time on how to get this right.

A little bit. I need it to be kind of like the original image I posted. But, I'm making a texture. So, it needs to be an "above" view like this video, but it needs to look a little more like this white wave. There needs to be visible waves coming in, with more and then gradually less cloud generation, if using a cloud generator is still relevant in this. Your general wave is pretty good though, but I need to combine your video with the shape of this wave. I really appreciate all of your advice. I've been looking at this for hours. :)

Great. I ended up creating my own solution that is fairly different than discussed. I used a Dots Bottom Top replicator, and it is taking a lot of work. I am almost done with it, but I do have another question. I need to slightly change the replicator I am using. Is there any way of "pausing" or trimming a replicator? I think I need my own custom replicator, which I think you can make in Motion. I'm just trying to edit this one a little bit. I screen recorded the replicator I want to edit — on the third pass you can see that I paused it with my space bar. I want my replicator to behave where it passes somewhat through and then passes where there is still white at the top. I also want it to have smaller circles at the bottom of the "wave" at all times and bigger ones at the top at all times.

Hello! Thank you for the insights. I am SUPER close with my final animation after a TON of work and experimentation. However, I just have one detail I have a quick question about.

Here's what I have managed to make on my own:

Obviously, it looks like a wave at the start and ending, but it clumps up and doesn't look like one throughout the entire thing. This is because the scale end is very large at 3500 and the scale is 1. There are 5,000 points in this (probably too much, explains the lag in the video).

I am trying to have the shape I had at the very start at the bottom of the video be the entire thing, from the start to finish of the loop.

Basically, I think I need to have my first couple of frames traverse "through" another replicator that is just a grid, perhaps? I've been trying everything I can.

Any thoughts?

Here's my replicator. My goal is to make the entire traversal look like this part of the replicator (the very start):

Instead, it gets bigger and more clumped together. I am trying to make it move along the entire replicator like the above image.

Edit:

I don't want to have multiple waves across this. I just want the replicator to look like the first image at any given point in the spread.

As an example, at this point:

And at this point:

They both have to look like the first image. I've tried changing the scale and scale end, but it just doesn't seem to work to well. Regardless of where you are in the animation, it needs to have the top and bottom scales of the first image.

Sure.

Ignore the blob effect, that's not relevant.

Here's my file structure:

Circle:

Nothing special here. No changes. No keyframes.

Replicator (originally got from Dots Bottom Top):

It has a Sequence Replicator:

This has the following properties:

The keyframes on Opacity just go from 0 to 100 from the first frame to the 30th frame, respectively.

Location is kind of like a sine wave, but I made it and it's skewed. It goes from -50 on first frame, to 56.4 at 1:14, to -41.45 at 3:22 and back to -50 at 5:00. Those are not really important numbers.

As for the replicator properties, the important ones that I changed were random fill, scale, the point amount and scale end.

That should be it. I've tried just about every creative solution I could think of on trying to make this work. I do have a few others I am trying out though.

Wow. I ended up doing a TON of work after that to get this right. But I think it turned out pretty good!

The only issue is that for some reason, there is a gray outline around the edges where the video meets the transparency, at least where I am using it after exporting.

I found someone with a similar issue but they were using an Adobe program:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/after-effects-discussions/how-do-i-remove-thin-black-outline-arount-transparent-video/m-p/11196057

I don't know if this is a problem with how I'm exporting it?