Click the image above to preview the final effect

Step 1;

Import your footage and make 2 groups: background and wormhole effect. Import your background footage into the background group.

Step 2;

Ok now go to the Library tab and click on Generators, then Cellular. Cellular creates an animated pattern that looks like bacteria or cells. Now apply that generator to the wormhole effect layer.

Step 3;

Now go to the Inspector tab and let's adjust the settings for the cellular to give us the effect we want. Now expand the options for Gradient and move the mid range slider closer to the black color.



Or you could manually input the value you want into the Location field. I find 25% looks nice, you really want to go for a nice contrast between the black and white points.

Step 4;

Alright now go to the Add Filters menu and select Stylize, then Slit Tunnel.

Step 5;

Then take drag the Perspective slider all the way to the left. Now it looks more like a rippling pond.

Step 6;

Now need to position the center where we want the wormhole to open. To do this you might want to take the opacity down to 50% to see where the center will line up with your footage.

Now bring up the Glow to about .30

Step 7;

Now add a Displace filter to your background, from the Add Filters then Distort menu.

Step 8;

Then grab and drop the wormhole effect group into the Displace, Map Image section.

Step 9;

Turn off your wormhole effect group to see the effect it's having on your background image. Turn on the Repeat edges feature to remove the black holes that appear around the edge of your clip.

Step 10;

Now let's create a mask to contain our wormhole effect so that it's not completely taking up the whole background. Select the wormhole effect group and select the Object menu and then Image Mask.

Step 11;

Then create a circle shape the size you want your wormhole to be.

Step 12;

Line up your cursor with the center of the slit tunnel and hold down shift and option when dragging to create an even circle shape and size.

Step 13;

Now drag the circle shape into the Image Mask.



Now the wormhole only appears within the circle.

note: if your warping effect is still bleeding outside the mask just redrag the wormhole group into the Displace effect again to refresh it.

Now go back to the parameters for the circle shape and drag the Feather slider all the way to right to create a soft drop off effect.

Step 14;

Alright now from here on out I'll show you some ways you can customize your effect. Now you can adjust the color of your wormhole in two places: The Glow color of the slit tunnel.



And the Gradient color of the Cellular generator.

Step 15;

Also you can add a Zoom Blur to the wormhole effect group to give it the appearance of a vacuum. Just make sure you set up your center point with the wormhole center.

You can also get some interesting effects by playing with the Speed parameter of the Cellular generator.

Alright that's about it, the rest is up to you!

You can also download the motion file and background image from the Tutorial assets section.