Once your animation has rendered out import both the z depth and the original animation into your comp in After Effects (along with your stock footage). Once this is done, 3D track or 2D depending on your shot, stuff your tracking data inside a null object. Stick your Z pass over the stock footage, then parent the tracking data (null object) to the render, z depth, and the stock footage. Color correct your stock footage, to match the scene’s lighting. Then add an exposure effect, on the z pass duplicate it, then add some exposure (on the first one) to gain some contrast to the z pass. Then change the track matte mode on the stock footage to ‘luma matte inverted’. This will stick your stock footage in the middle of your render. If you go back to the z depth pass and play around with the first exposure effect you can adjust on to where the stock footage will be in your render.
This is an exaggerated example of a z depth pass, you can use the Video Copilot’s Plug -In Element 3D with your 3D models to add Z depth that way
When I first started with VFX I relied on action stock footage a lot, and I slowly found this to be an issue The problem I was facing then was the stock footage together didn’t really look all that great, like it didn’t feel 3D enough nor fit in the scene too well.
Action Essentials from Video Copilot is probably your best option on action stock footage.
To fix my issue I did a little research and found out it probably would be better to add some of your own 3D renders to the stock footage. For example I want to make a piece of a building fall and hit the ground, I would create a animated part of a building falling and shattering. Then I would render it two ways, One the actual textured and complete and the other with a Z-Depth Pass. To render out the z depth pass you need to go to ‘render layers’ in the properties panel and check ‘mist’, render out a frame by clicking F12, then go to your ‘node editor’ and select the render layers icon toward the bottom. Then select ‘use nodes’, ‘backdrop, and ‘auto render’. Then proceed to add ‘viewer’ and ‘invert’ nodes (and ‘render layers’ node if it didn’t appear), drag the ‘mist’ to the color on the ‘invert’ node, (click RGB if it isn’t selected already), then drag the color (on the opposite side of the node) to the viewer node (make sure use alpha is checked), then simply click on the node. Then export it as you normally would. Part two will be uploaded soon in which the after effects part will available.
Since the dawn of CC 2017 for After Effects, the ability render out videos in a .mp4 format have been taken out. By taken out I mean taken out of default render options, there is still a way to get that sweet nicely encoded mp4 format.
Adobe Media Encoder’s default layout
Now if you have the creative cloud you can download Adobe Media Encoder, this is what is gonna let you render out in .mp4. The best way to go about rendering something out in this program is to, save your After Effects file, click on the comp that you want to render, go to file – export – add to Adobe Media Encoder Que. Media Encoder will eventually open up, and if it doesn’t, go to wherever you installed it on your computer, go down to the .exe file and open it, once opened drag and drop your comp into the application. There will be blue text that appears, that’s where you can change your options where to render, and the type of file extension you want it to have.
Making a solid VFX edit depends heavily on the shots in which you edit. So if you have a shot that requires heavy VFX development and it isn’t set up right, your VFX isn’t gonna look as good as anticipated.
The Mummy Returns, Crab Monster Thing, featuring The Rock
A good starting point would to set up two shots, One with a green screen and one without. With this method you have the green screen footage in which you can play with and the other footage (in which should be the same movement and same frame, just without the green screen, and actors) you have to stick behind the chroma key. With the chroma key you can add different background and effects without having to roto out the actors. Which will bring us to the other technique, which is rotoscoping. With this you don’t have to use the green screen, you can simply select and make your actors a seperate layer without destroying the background. The only issue to this is, the fact this will take a while and is very tedious. However if you can master this technique then, this can very efficient to your set. Another technique to help your VFX scenes would be making track masks. There is a plug-in in After Effects called Mocha AE, in which you can draw and adjust track masks of your subject, This kinda acts like rotoscoping however you apply this effect to work as a mask, this mask will follow your subject around a scene in which you can work your VFX magic around. So just take one of these techniques and try them out, it will be beneficial to practice.
Animation. Many people generally think of the movie Cars, however not all animation is like this. Animation is a method in which pictures are manipulated to appear as moving images, so it doesn’t have to be a 3D based result. In After Effects you can animation or move layers through keyframes in the timeline.
Here is a video with a fun tutorial on animation
Now to make any animation smoother, you simply select the keyframes, right click, go down to keyframe assistant, and select easy-ease or simply click F9 after selecting them. Once that is done click the graph editor, highlight the square knobs and pull the yellow hands toward whichever side to achieve a smooth and cool animation effect.
Blender is a free and open-source 3D computer graphics software used for creating animated films, visual effects, art, 3D printed models, and more. Blender is a massive program and to learn everything at once is close to impossible. So to learn as much as you can, you need to break blender down into different categories. With the main ones being Animation, Modeling, and Compositing.
Blender 2.8, use of the particle system and volumetric lighting
The first thing that a beginner should learn is animation. Animation drives everything in Blender, so this would be super helpful to learn. So the best place to learn this is YouTube. Whenever you see a intense or complex intro on a TV show or even YouTube for that matter, animation drives it, of course. So the best place to look to learn something this complex is to look no further than the people who create these. Now you aren’t gonna learn everything you need to know from making an intro or watching a tutorial on it. However you can take these base concepts of animation and transfer it to the modeling aspect, to make your very own animation.
This tutorial shows a bit of what you can do with After Effects, however the video mainly shows how to animate text to flow smoothly and simply look nice. The animation part of this video is necessary to learn to advance further into blender.
The next step to furthering your knowledge in blender would to start learning how model. This is essential to know if you want to know how put anything into a scene (video). When you learn modeling, you can build anything you want, you can even 3D print your creations. Compositing is the next step on mastering blender, compositing is where you can take multiple scenes and bring them together while adding different effects and such.
Imagine that you just finished this insane explosion sequence within a forest, and rendered it out. After god knows how long, you take your first peak at it. The explosion, the main focus of attention on this scene looks off. The explosion itself shakes a little and at some points sits in front of the trees and looks wonky. This issue is an simple fix, but tedious. This blog generally centers around After Effects and soon Blender however these tips can apply in any program, even Nuke.
Nuke
Tracking. This is the most important factor in any VFX shot. Tracking is vital to match the camera movements. A problem that people have when tracking is that their track point or plane constantly moves around. Now these tips are going to help individual tracking systems, because there are two, Planar Tracking and Point Tracking. Planar tracking is tracking system that uses a spot of texture to apply a plane to in order to track it. So when your plane is flying around It’s because the plane doesn’t have enough texture to grab on to, maybe someone in your shot it moving and the plane runs into that person. The best way to fix this is whenever the plane runs into a moving object simple pull the anchor points, and move the plane out of the person’s way. If the problem is that there isn’t enough texture, simply select a different area and re-track or select a smaller area. If this still doesn’t fix the issue, try using a point tracking system. A point tracking system is a system of tracking in which by name, uses a high contrast point in order to track. The best way of going about this is, simply duplicate the original clip, add some sort of sharpening effect and crank it way up. Then point track the highest contrast point there, once that is done export the tracking data to either a layer or a null object (a data placeholder). Then delete that duplicate layer and you are all set.
Video Copilot is a blog/website run by Andrew Kramer, which pushes out very useful plug-ins, free and paid. The more well known plug-ins are Element 3D and Saber. However Video Copilot does have around four free plug-ins as well as four paid as well, but what plug-in is the best?
Video Copilot’s Saber
Within the free category, the plug-ins are going to have limited uses right? Well over the course of two years of simply messing around, I’ve found that I seem to use the free plug-ins more than expected. For example I made an Blender intro and exported it as a series of .pngs, and imported it into After Effects. I used the auto-trace option, which traced the outline of the text and made into a mask. I made a solid layer and put the saber effect on it, then copy and pasted the layer mask on the solid layer. Then under the customize core option within the effects panel selected the use masks. option. This made a cool looking electric look around my text. The simple customize core option is what makes this plug-in have more than one simple use. This is the premise of what makes a plug-in great.
Video Copilot’s Element 3D
So what paid plug-in from Video Copilot has the most uses. The answer is simple, Element 3D. Now this answer is a bit biased on the fact that this is a VFX blog, and the use of 3D elements are almost necessary. Simply this plug-in has the most uses in the VFX world. If you’re using After Effects for the motion graphic aspect then the best paid plug-in would be Twitch. Twitch is a plug-in that adds camera shake with blur, scale, position, etc. This would be useful for simple intros for businesses and organizations that want a minimalistic design and also useful for heavy intros like 3D ones as well. The use for Twitch in VFX is also pretty great. When I add an explosion into a scene, I tend to add camera shake, from twitch. So go out there and get some plug-ins bois, they are pretty useful and worth the money.
The Render 