How To Make A Video Mosaic In After Effects + FREE Templates

Adobe After Effects Mosaic Effect

The mosaic video effect is a very popular type of visual effect seen in many types of videos. The only problem is that it is very time consuming and difficult to create inside of Adobe After Effects. Fortunately, there are a few templates available to help you achieve a few variations of this effect quickly and easily. Here are our top 3 favorites.

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Adobe After Effects Mosaic Transition

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This mosaic transition template for Adobe after effects features multiple white-framed images animated onto a plane which eventually forms a single large image. It's a simple to use template which can be customized to suit your need. Adjust anything you like, including the animations, image properties, text animations and more. The pack has 20 different mosaic transition options, you can easily use multiple images or one big image to transition from one mosaic to another. The kit also includes an easy-to-follow tutorial to help you get started.

Mosaic After Effects Template

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The mosaic template by Taiga2 available on Envato Elements, is a simple to use mosaic builder for After Effects. All you need to do to customize it is replace the placeholder media in each composition with your own photos and videos. This mosaic template for Adobe After Effects features a stylish and smooth animation which begins with the camera pointed directly at the centre of the frame, and then zooms out smoothly until the entire mosaic is revealed as a single image. The are lot's of 3D parallax elements also featured in this template, which makes is extra unique compared to the others. It also includes optional text, title and overlay animations which can be added in or removed in just one click.

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After Effects Mosaic Photo Reveal

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With over 16,000 downloads, this is one of the most popular After Effects Templates of all time! With this mosaic photo reveal template on VideoHive, you can quickly and design your own photo mosaic animation within just a few clicks! With up to 100 placeholders for your images or video clips, you can easily convert any image into a mosaic, or use multiple images to form one big image that transitions to or from the mosaic.

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How To Make The Mosaic Effect In After Effects

All three templates are easy to use. To make the mosaic effect inside of After Effects, simply replace the placeholder footage in each composition with your own. Each template project file will feature clear instructions as to which composition needs to be fulfilled with your own media such as photos and videos. If you'd like to make your own mosaic without the help from a template, here's how you can do it with the native mosaic effect that comes with After Effects.

1. Create The Element To Be Turned Into A Mosaic

Let's get started by creating a placeholder for the logos or elements that we want to break apart using the mosaic effect. To do this, we'll make a new text layer and type in the word "logo." Let's choose a gold-brown color and shrink it down to fit more or less towards the center. Using the align panel, we can easily put it right in the middle.

Now, let's add some visual interest by dressing it up with a white drop shadow with an opacity of 100 and a distance above 15. We'll also add a stroke to make it pop! This will serve as the logo for our piece.

To keep things organized, let's pre-compose this by pressing control-shift-C and making sure to move all attributes to a new composition. We'll call this the logo comp, and any changes we make will happen to this comp. If we need to tweak anything later on, no worries, we can always go inside and make the changes there.

2. Creating a Control Layer

Now, let's create the next layer, which is the control layer. To do this, we'll start by making a new solid, setting it to the composition size, and choosing either white or black - it doesn't matter which one we choose.

Next, we'll cover up the solid using fractal noise. Fractal noise generates a beautiful cloud pattern, and we can change the fractal type and noise type to create different effects. For our purposes, we want to increase the contrast to 150 and tweak the brightness if necessary. We want to make sure that we can see pure black spots and pure white spots, and there's a considerable amount of change going on throughout. This layer will control what happens in the next part, so we want to make it just right!

To keep things organized, let's pre-compose this layer by pressing control-shift-C again and calling it the control comp. We'll move our attributes into the new composition so that the fractal noise we created stays on that solid and goes into the composition. We can drag this below the logo comp or poke its eye out, as we don't need to look at it.

3. Using Card Dance

Moving on to the logo comp, we will now employ the Card Dance effect. This effect will fragment the layer into numerous small cards and animate them utilizing another layer. We must select gradient layer 1 as the control comp, implying that it will utilize the gradient and fractal noise that we applied to it. This will multiply the values beneath the cards, subsequently generating position and rotation changes in those cards.

To divide the layer into various rows and columns in order to make the cards, we will adjust the rows and columns of these cards. Specifically, we would like 90 rows and 160 columns, which means dividing the layer's height into 90 pieces and its width into 160. Since this is a 16 x 9 composition, we will divide it up into squares.

Overall, this will create an aesthetically pleasing mosaic effect that is sure to impress.