For the second weather sting I produced I ran into a problem with how the graphics were looking. The weather logo was displayed above a puddle with the reflection of the pavilion and I masked in a reflection for the logo too, but it didn't look right with the way the water was moving underneath it. I first used mocha for After Effects to create a tracked plane the the text was fixed to:
To better fix the logo into its environment I decided to try and simulate what I could see happening to the reflection in the puddle and apply it to the logo's reflection. To do this I found an effect called 'turbulent displacement' which sounded like it would have desired effect:
To get a proper simulation of the waters distortion effect I combined 2 Turbulent Displacement modules and one for Gaussian Blur. I used one to create very sharp, high-amplitude ripples from left to right as it was what I was seeing in the puddle. The other one was used to create a much more gentle ripple from top to bottom to add some more detail. The Gaussian Blur was used to make it look VERY slightly out of focus, as the focal plane was actually just behind the reflection.
In order to animate the ripples I used the 'Evolution Seed Number' which determines the starting point for each ripple. This was key-framed to increase from 0 to 76 (the number of frames in the composition). This means that the pattern for the displacement shifted by one step for each frame, creating a natural water-like movement. The intensity of the displacement was also key-framed to match the patterns of the breeze blowing across the puddle.