Aberrator 2.0

Aberrator has a wide range of abilities ranging from subtle blue/cyan AB to creative and colorful effects.

This is a reinvention of an earlier tool I made [Called Aberrator], which offered a red/cyan uniform AB. This project was very special to me because I made it exactly a year ago, and the difference between these gizmos demonstrates my growth as a Nuke artist.

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A shot of a field with some slight AB.

The first option is what output you want the node to give. By default, it's the result but you can also take exclusively the AB to mess with further or check your input.

The next two controls are for the amount of AB and where the center point is (if you're using regular and not uniform)

There are 4 checkboxes that each perform a simple task.

-Invert Colors will swap the R/Cyan or RGB AB around

-Invert distortion will make the AB strongest in the center of the image and falloff towards the edges

-Uniform will create a constant amount of AB that will be applied to the entire image.

-Full Spectrum will switch the AB from the default R/Cyan to RGB

The last big section is something I call Chromatic Echo. It offsets the RGB channels temporally meaning the red channel is ahead of the green channel which is ahead of the blue channel by however many frames you like.

Here there is actually no AB, it's entirely Chromatic Echo.

Below is a video of a boxer punching a bag with an effect I created using Aberrator. There are limitless creative opportunities.

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How It Works

The left half is the ST Map driven AB, on the right is the uniform AB. A lot of properties like the Chromatic Echo properties could be cloned between the two sides which saved a lot of time.

Most, if not all of the properties, are connected directly to the Aberrator controls and use 'if, then' statements like the one below. The nodes' settings would correspond to the UI while the disable box of the node carried a similar statement to tell it whether or not it was active.

Aberrator.invert == 0 ? 1 + (Aberrator.aberration_amount * .5) : 1 + (Aberrator.aberration_amount)

One thing I learned while making Aberrator was how to write conditional statements that relied on multiple conditions. In the example below I told the green channel to have a time offset only if full spectrum was deactivated AND Chromatic Echo was turned on.

Aberrator.fs == 0 && Aberrator.ce_activate == 1 ? 0 : 1

I've linked the resource I used to learn this below, it contains all sorts of other useful information as well in a very neatly broken down post!

https://www.gatimedia.co.uk/expressions