Trapcode Form Contours Tutorial

This is my 1st tutorial. Don't kill me! Hats off to you who've made these before. What a total ball-ache. The Quicktime screen capture was at nearly 50fps so I had to transcode down to 25fps or i'd get weird green flashes and the playback would spazz-out. I then realised it's better to VO after making the tutorial or you'd hear me smacking the keyboard all the way through it.
Anyhow! This is for you guys who asked for a tutorial on how I made my contour lines FUI animation. Yes it's a bit different to what i've posted previously but hopefully visually better and easier for you to play with and fingers crossed, you'll come up with shortcuts that I will slap my forehead in awe to see.

[@sk00ly]

incredibly helpful - thank you so much; I learned a lot

[@TheDigitalCreative]

Very insightful, thanks Simon! Looking forward to seeing more great tutorials like this one.

[@motionrevolution5566]

Amazing Bro !!!, thanks so much for this , lifesaver

[@cg_marciano]

First of all, Awesome tut man! and second I just wanted to bring something to the table...
You could save some layers on the fractal noise department, if you have two fractal noise effects in the same layer you can use the blending modes in the effect then do the color correction and blur in the same layer... I guess it all comes down to personal preference too... anyways... thanks for the tut. Cheers!

[@Taro.Takeda]

very nice tutorial!! THX!!

[@cless15]

Amazing, thanks!

[@DA_MIAN_IS_HERE]

This tut is amazing, a lot of tricks on the way to learn. I wonder whether it is possible to instead of having a squared perimeter, have a random shape, do you think there is smooth workaround it?

[@SimonTerrey]

Hi there & cheers for that! Well you could make a new square 2K comp and add a new solid and draw the mask shape you want and then bring that comp back into the main comp and turn its 'eyeball' off and under Form>Layer Maps>Color and Alpha, under 'Layer' select your new comp then under functionality pick A to A (Alpha to Alpha) and Map Over XY (I think, if the project orientation is XY anyhow) So this new layer acts as a layer mask to the map(s).

[@DA_MIAN_IS_HERE]

Nice. I'll try it out, thank you@@SimonTerrey

[@onurnidayi]

Killing it Bro, more like this please :)

[@RyanForneyVFX]

Are you selling the project file? Or is it available for download?

[@onurnidayi]

Changing the Threshold by 20 didn't work for me as they all disappeared, I had to do them by about 0.2 increments each. It doesn't come up as 128 on my version of ae but as 0 to 1