Element 3D - After Effects plug in

Element 3D is an After Effects plug-in built by Video Copilot who are a software company that create tools and train people who love motion design and visual effects. Element 3D allows you to make a 2D image/text into a 3D model and then make that 3D model animatable so that you can create idents, 3D effects and import 3D objects you've created in cinema 4D or an OBJ model.

This software plug-in isn't free to use however, it cost about $199.99, yes its american so it cost me only £145.95 so I actually got it for cheaper but it's still very expensive. I do believe that it is worth the money though and it is used by many industry people which is why I bought it so that I can get to know the software before hand. Video Copilot also do many other plug-ins for After Effects like action essentials, optical flares, and shockwave particle FX design. I've watched a couple of videos showing me how I can use the plug-in in After Effects and what features it has to offer.

With this plug-in I experimented with all the features and learnt how it works and what I can do with it. I also made a space atmosphere within element 3D and After Effects so that I could experiment further with the camera and lighting in a 3D space, as well I've add in smoke/fog and a space like background. I hope to develop my abilities within element 3D and learn more about incorporating my own models into element 3D so that I'm not using other peoples work and create my own unique animation.

   

3D Camera Tracking AE

3D camera tracking is an effect where After Effects takes your footage and tracks certain point frame by frame in the footage so that when you are done tracking your footage you can create a null object and attach the null to a tracked pion and then apply an image or some text to the null, so that it looks like the image or text is actually in the 3D environment you took with your camera.

In my opinion this is important to know about when you're creating visual effects because the effect looks more believable if it looks like the effect is in the 3D environment. So what I did was I went onto YouTube and watched a couple of videos about how I can create this effect in After Effects. In the tutorial I watched the commentator took me through step by step of how I can track my footage and then place 3D and 2D objects into the scene. It seemed quite simple to do but it is suggested that in the footage the you shoot that the less reflection, lens flares and camera movement the better the tracking effect will be. Plus there is a pixel error count in the tracking effect and if the pixel count gets above 1.5 then the tracking won't be that good.     

After watching this video I wanted to give it a go for myself, so I got my camera and filmed a pan around a table so that I could place an object on top of the table in After Effects. It took me quite a long time to do because my After Effects was being a bit weird and doing this thing where when I added a camera to the scene, the object that I wanted to place just disappeared. However, I solved the problem by copying the position of the tracked null and pasted it on to the position of the object and it seemed to work fine then. the object that I wanted to place in the footage was some dark energy that I created in After Effects as well,  I created it by using some effects like vegas, offset, polar coordinates, fractal noise, masking, turbulent displace and mirrors. I also used an effects called audio orient to camera so that when the camera pans round the table the dark energy will always face the camera.    

  

I feel like what I've done is good but I could of done better with the fractal noise effect because it's a bit to bark and there isn't must grey coning through the effect. Also I'd like to add more radial waves to the effect so that it looks like there is more coming out of the dark energy. I do like how it stays in the same place on the table when the camera moves round and I do like the lines that come out of the dark energy because it makes the energy look more alien like which is even creepier. The one thing I would change would be the environment because the style of the effect doesn't match the pleasant background, so I'd like to shoot the footage in a different place so that the effect would match the footage better.   

Oscar being Iron man Effects

Putting my video together was quite hard to do because I had to find the right looking laser blast footage on youtube and there at loads! It was also hard because I had to make the colours of the both blasts the same colour scheme as the video of Oscar, so this meant me looking at the video of about an hour just changing the colour of the blasts so that they match up right.

After doing that I then had to position the blasts so that they look like they are coming out of Oscars chest, this meant making them both a 3D layer so that I could get them in the right angle as Oscar was stood. Another thing I had to do was I had t use a mask on the energy blast because Oscars arm is in front of the blast so I had to hide part of the energy blast to make it look like it was going behind his arm. I also had to move the position on the laser blast and key frame it behind Oscar and then key frame it again in front of him so that it looks like the blast is moving forwards out of his chest, Using another mask so that it hides the laser blast when it's behind Oscar.  

All in all I feel like I've done a good job with this even though the content of the video is a bit childish but I just wanted it to look a bit more epic than what it should actually be. There are a couple of things I would change like making the blast look more like it is bursting out of the chest by adding more of a flash when it comes out or something like that. I'd also use a motion tracker to Oscars body so that I can attach it to the blast, this will make the effects look more realistic in my opinion. However this whole thing was just for fun and it does what I wanted it to do which was to make Oscar look like Iron Man.   

   

Energy Blast Effect - After Effects tutorials

Now that I knew how to composite effects into my own video I now wanted to know how to add a radial energy blast effect to my video as well, so I went to youtube again and found a tutorial which simply shows me how to do that. The guy in the video show my how to make the energy blast effect by using masks and changing the expansions on then to create a radio wave and then added a fractal noise effect to it with some turbulent displacement and rough edges effects to the mask. This distorted the radio wave and made it look like an energy blast.

I followed the tutorial step by step and ended up with an energy blast which now I could import into the video of Oscar pretending to be Iron Man. I feel like the energy blast that I created is to slow for what I'm wanting to do with it so I'll have to mess around with the time when I import it into the video, I also will have to correct the colours of the energy blast so that it matches up with the video of Oscar, I'l do this because if I don't the blast will look out of place and it will just look really bad.

Visual Effects Tutorials/Research

I've recently been watching a load of visual effects tutorials on youtube that I can make in After Effects so that I can create my own shorts with good visual effects which can go in my showreel at the end of the year. I'm not really sure yet what I'm going to do with the knowledge on visual effects but I was thinking all the tutorials will come in hand for me when I enter the 3rd year of uni when I can do what I want and make a nice visual film that looks some what cinematic.

The first thing that comes to my mind when visual effects is mentioned are the action films like all the marvel films because I'm just a fan of how they use CGI and VFX in the films. So what I looked in to doing in After Effects was a laser blast effect, but I also got inspiration from my friend Oscar because we where messing around and he put a light to his chest and pretended he was Iron Man. I know this is a bit childish however I wanted to add a blast effects to this to make it look more like Iron Man, plus it was fun to do.    

So what I did was I went to youtube and looked up how to create a laser blast effect so that I could place it onto Oscars chest. I found a video that showed me how to composite a blast clip from youtube to a video in After Effects, and it also showed me how to colour correct the blast clip so that it looks like it's in the same video as my own which was very useful. However, the tutorial didn't show me how to create my own energy blast effect which it what I really wanted to know how to do so I've found another video which does show me but I'll blog about that in another post.

Identifying Area of Practice

The areas of practice that I would like to go in to are film based industries that create amazing CGI and visual effects but also have a department for 3D animation. I've said this because I find visual effects so interesting and I love watching behind the scenes footage of films and tv series' just so I can see how the effects are made and what they use to make the effects. For Example I've watched all of the Game of Thrones BTS videos on YouTube because I find it fascinating seeing how they create landscapes and architecture out of nothing but just using green screens and 3D modelling softwares.

I've worked on a couple of my own videos using visual effects and I've found the experience very helpful to figure out how hard it actual is to create a realistic effect, however once you've started making the visual effect for the video you become very determined to finish it whilst making it look realistic. I will be show my videos with my visual effects in my blog but later on after I've talked about how I created the effect and what I looked at for inspiration.

I've looked at a few studios which also work in the same field that I want to work in like Blue Zoo which is a 3D/2D animation studio down in London, Nvisible which is a visual effects studio that does high end effects for top films, which is also down in London, and I've also looked at The Imaginarium Studios where they focus on capturing human actions and placing them in animated films and they do this by only using motion capture technology. This is a studio which was created by Andy Serkis who is the best motion capture performer in the industry and has won may awards for his performances in films such as when he played golem in lord of the rings and the main ape in rise of the planet of the apes.      

Manchester Animation Festival

Throughout the days I spent at Manchester Animation Festival (MAF) I watch hundreds of animations some really good other not so much. I also got a chance to watch the new rendition of the animated TV show 'Danger Mouse', which I thought I'd love because I'm a fan of the old show and it reminded me of my childhood, however I didn't like the new version of the show because they completely changed the character design of Danger Mouse and made him look more aggressive and sharper where as before he was a bit chubby and friendlier.

 
There where some interesting talks that were given to us like the masterclass talk from Tomm Moore who is the the co producer at Cartoon Saloon and best known for being producer and director on film 'Song of the Sea' and 'The Secret of Kells'. We also got a talk on stop motion animation - armature making, which taught us about the making of characters in stop motion animation and how complicated it actually is to create a model for an animation and also how long it takes and how many people are involved in the making of just one armature puppet.

There was one talk that unfortunately I did not get to see because I was to busy doing something else in the festival and the talk was Blue Zoo: Keeping an Animation Studio Animated. I wanted to go to this talk because Blue Zoo are a 3D animation studio based down in London which I'd like to either work for or just have an internship with. There studio seems interesting and entertaining and the area of practice I'd like to go in is 3D animation and VFX which they do in there studio. Plus I follow them on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

Looking back at all the animations I watched throughout the three days one animation really stuck in my head mainly it was a stunning CGI animated short film called 'Chiaroscuro' about a ball on fire wrecking stuff but I loved it just because it looked visually beautiful and it tells a powerful story about light and darkness and the power of nature.          
Chiaroscuro from Daniel Drummond on Vimeo.