What is the ACES workflow? 

ACES. It’s a simple term, with plenty of difficult-to-grasp concepts behind it. Nevertheless, let’s take a step forward with an entry-level explanation of what ACES is:

ACES, or Academy Color Encoding System is considered to be the ‘industry standard’ for colour. Think of standardised traffic laws but for colours instead! ACES is often associated with fields such as filmmaking, visual effects, animation and color correction. 

Now let’s dive into a more in-depth explanation of ACES and how it is expected to make waves in the future of post-production. 

In this article, we’ll jump into detail about all the things that come under ACES, before moving on to how you use the ACES workflow in After Effects. Let’s begin by answering the first question:

What is a Color Space?

In simple words, a color space is a particular subset in the full color spectrum, which is also a standard colour profile for digital media. 

The horseshoe graph represents all the colours that are perceived by the human eye. However, the industry standard – ever since the introduction of coloured television – has long been stuck on the sRGB colour space. sRGB is a smaller colour space and does not contain the full range of colors that is perceivable by the human eye. 

When talking about the colour space, you may also come across the word, colour gamut. This basically refers to the range of colours that any device can display or produce. Because of this factor, the colour space may vary depending on the device you are viewing it on. 

This leads us to the question, 

Is ACES better than sRGB? 

ACES has a wider colour gamut. Think of a colour gamut as a canvas. The bigger the canvas, the more possibility and freedom there is to extend colours. In this analogy, the canvas of potential colors ACES can contain is much larger. 

Older TVs and films were limited in their ability to display a wider range of colours – hence the industry standard sRGB that we know and witness everywhere today. 

The problem? sRGB is not the best for post-production, VFX and 3D rendering – especially when audiences now have higher expectations of the quality of colors.

What is the Purpose of ACES in Post-Production?

Every device has a different colour gamut. For example, if you rendered footage on film with a wider film gamut, it will automatically look a lot more dull on a monitor that has a smaller colour gamut.

As you can probably imagine, this causes a lot of problems in post since there are various input sources depending on the kind of camera used – since every camera, such as RED, IMAX etc. have their uniquely patented colour spaces. Because of this, a lot of time – and resources – is spent to ensure that all input sources are in line with each other before any colour correction work can even begin. 

This is the exact problem that ACES aims to solve. Now that we know the root problem that ACES aims to solve, let’s go through what ACES is once again. 

What is ACES?

ACES is a device-independent image interchange and colour management system that aims to standardise the various colour spaces between different input sources.

ACES is mainly composed of three main features:

1. High Dynamic Range (HDR)
2. Workflow that is RGB-based
3. Ultra-wide colour gamut

These three features are what makes media processed using the ACES workflow suitable for professional use.

The ACES Workflow – Easy Explanation

ACES isn’t a program or a plugin that you can download and use. Instead, it is a workflow that can improve our renders. 

It does so by offering the following features:

Expanded Colour Space

ACES offers a wider colour landscape as compared to the standard sRGB; making renders seem more photorealistic than what we may see on TV or on computer screens usually.

Natural-Appearing Highlights

With ACES, it is possible to avoid overexposed areas in an image, especially where any intense sources of light are visible, such as the sun, explosions and muzzle flashes.

Linear Workflow

Linear workflows process light linearly, without gamma-correction interfering with the colour information. This mimics the way that light behaves in the real world, allowing editors to make predictable adjustments to their images.

Wider Colour Representation

Thanks to the expanded colour space, calculations made in ACES make use of more colors that are out of reach from the standard sRGB color space.

But, the question remains,

How Does the ACES Pipeline Work?

Let’s take a look at core elements of the ACES workflow in-depth:

What is IDT?

ACES works in what is called a scene-referred linear space. This is the digital representation of the linear luminance levels as seen in front of a camera lens. Or, to make it even more simple, a scene-referred linear space is the direct, one-to-one relationship between the real-world brightness, and the data that is used to represent that in an image file.

But, then how does ACES work with camera files if it uses a scene-referred linear space? It’s simple, ACES uses what is called an Input Device Transform (IDT) to transform 10-12 bit log values in the camera files to scene-referred linear space. 

Because every camera is different, a different ACES IDT is required for various cameras. 

What is ODT?

Once images are successfully transformed into ACES space, it is imperative to make sure that they’re being displayed correctly. This is where we come to the second step in the ACES workflow; the Output Display transform (ODT).

An important thing to remember when working with a monitoring device is that there is no such thing as a perfectly unbiased display device (capable of displaying colours with perfect accuracy). It is impossible to display scene-referred linear image information since every monitor display has limitations and can only show a specific colour gamut.

As is with any display device, the display device you use will also expect input data that is encoded with a non-linear color space. Similar to any camera that needs a dedicated IDT, every display device and rendered file outputs through ACES needs to be provided in standard delivery colour spaces, such as sRGB or Rec.709.

Preserving Data By Unification

Another part of the ACES workflow is preserving the intended look of your project once you have color graded it. This is done by using a platform independent method.

This is part of another transform known as Reference Render Transform (RRT). This will ensure that whatever new colour spaces or output devices are released in the future, the grade that you intended will always remain as it is. 

You can read more about the fundamentals of ACES here.

What is Tone Mapping?

If we wish to view the results of our ACES render on an sRGB monitor, we would have to map the high dynamic values, to the low dynamic values (in this case, sRGB). This process is called tone mapping and is also performed during the last step. 

While the ACES workflow may seem like a lot to handle all at once, it is still a good time to get your hands used to working with ACES. Keeping up with new technology is an integral part of working in the field of visual effects; especially as OLED TV displays become mainstream and people will start to demand content with rich colours.

Ready to expand the colour gamut that you’ve been using?

How to Use the ACES Workflow in After Effects

Previously, the availability of ACES natively in After Effects seemed like almost a dream. Users would have to use a third-party OCIO plug-in to run ACES on the program. But with the newest After Effects update (2023), Adobe announced that with OCIO integration – which is a colour management solution that helps with enforcing a colour management technology – users can use ACES natively in After Effects.

If you’ve been itching to get started with ACES on After Effects, read ahead to find out how you can enable the ACES workflow on the program:

Change Colour Management Settings

1. Select Project Settings from under the Project menu.
2. Once you click Project Settings, you should be able to see the Colour tab there.
3. Click the colour tab and set the Color Engine as OCIO Color Managed. If you do not see the option, try looking for the Colour Management section first.
4. Set your OCIO Configuration to ACES 1.2

Now we can further refine the color settings.

1. Set your bit-depth to 32 bits per channel (float).
2. The recommended Working Color Space is “compositing_linear: ACES – ACEScg”
3. Next, go to Display Colour Space, and select ACES/sRGB

Choose Media Colour Input

The OCIO Configuration may automatically assign any imported media with an overridden Media Colour Space. 

If you want to make changes to the input media’s color space, then you will have to override this setting.

Follow these steps:

Right-click the footage → Interpret Footage → Main → Color → Override Media Colour Space

The colorspace you select here will depend on the file you import. For example, PNG images will often require the Output/Output – sRGB color space, while footage files may use Output/Output Rec.709. It is recommended that you take the time to understand what your source media has been encoded in for the best accuracy.

Update and Specify Colour When Creating a New Composition

If you’ve worked with After Effects for a long time, then you know the Composition Panel is responsible for displaying colours that are converted from the working space to the ones on the display.

To change these colours, all you have to do is choose a colour by:

Composition Panel → Display Colour Space 

Choose Colour Output from the Render Queue

Once you’re ready, add your project to the render queue, don’t hit render immediately! Instead, go to the Output Module dropdown list and:

Custom → Colour → Output Colour Space → sRGB or Rec.709 (use these when exporting a final deliverable).

And that’s your ACES workflow implemented! It is not as difficult as it may sound, or as difficult as others make it out to be, but it does make a huge difference to the quality of your render.

Why deprive your audience (and yourself) of true-to-life colours and present dull colours within a limited colour space when you can expand and break the boundaries of what’s visually possible? 

If you’re worried about where to begin, there are plenty of YouTube tutorials – both new and old – that go into detail about what ACES is, and how you can start creating with the ACES workflow today!

Download a free Light Wrap plugin for Adobe After Effects here

ProductionCrate has released a free light wrap plugin for Adobe After Effects! It is available to download now. Crate’s Light Wrap fixes one of the biggest obstacles any VFX artist faces, how to cleanly and easily composite in After Effects. We made it specifically for use alongside the VFX Assets available at FootageCrate, but it works perfectly for any compositor’s needs.

What is a light wrap?

Light-wraps are an effective and underutilized technique that improves the realism of a compositor VFX. These simulate the apparent diffusion of extremely bright lights around a foreground, helping to integrate the composited layer into the background. This visually blends the two different layers, creating a cohesive unified final image.

When should I use a light wrap?

Light wraps are commonly used against bright backgrounds, skies, fire video effects and any other intense sources of illumination. This can be added with the motivation of improving the realism of a scene, as a bright source of light (such as an explosion) will carry excessive luminant energy that leaks into adjacent pixels. This means that when a particular area of an explosion is being obscured by a foreground, its colors may still influence the pixel’s final output due to bloom, illumination and fog scattering.

An artist may also want to add a light-wrap for stylistic purposes to visually exaggerate the intensity of a source of light. For example, a dragon breath can be given a stronger light wrap to communicate its deadly heat; or the opening doorway of a UFO blinding the onlookers to reinforce their mysterious nature. Digitally, a pixel can only reach a maximum luminance of 1 (white), so to create a sense of limitless intensity, the implied brightness is reinforced by a light-wrap.

How to create a light wrap in After Effects

Crate’s Light Wrap generates light-wraps at blazing fast speeds. While most light-wrap After Effects tutorial videos require a dozen individual steps to complete, Crate’s Light Wrap generates these optical effects instantly.

Begin by installing the plugin to your Windows or Mac plugin directory:
Windows:      Extract plugin to C:\Program Files\Adobe\Common\Plug-ins\7.0\MediaCore
Mac:                Extract plugin to Applications/Adobe After Effects/Plug-in

Open Adobe After Effects, and in your composition, identify your background (the source of light) and the foreground (what the light-wrap will interact with).

The plugin then requires you to pre-compose these two layers, so that they can be correctly aligned. Once that’s done, apply Crate’s Light Wrap to your foreground layer.

• Background Layer – Use this to select the source of your light wrap.
• Background blur – Blur the background before the light-wrap is generated to help smooth out colors.
• 
• Wrap Width – How far into the foreground the light-wrap extends
• 
• Exposure – Controls how bright the light-wrap is
• Blend mode – Choose between several different ways for the light-wrap to transfer onto the image
• Tint/Color – Increase the saturation of the light wrap
• 
• Luminance Bias – Use this to control how much influence the foreground’s luminance has on the intensity of the light wrap
• 
• Bias Exposure – Adjust the luminance bias matte’s brightness
• Bias Gamma – Adjust the luminance bias matte’s contrast
• Auto Detect Gamma – Allow the plugin to guess the best color management settings for your project
• View – Change how the light-wrap is output to the layer.
• Premult background – Before the light wrap is processed, premultiply the background so that anything directly behind the foreground does not contribute to the glow.
• 

The great way to build a free light wrap in After Effects is to duplicate the foreground layer and apply the light wrap with the “View” set to “Wrap Solo”. By setting the blending mode to “Add” or “Screen”, you will have a separate light wrap layer that is available for even more artistic control. For example, you can add a Curves layer to enhance a specific color, or control exactly where the light wrap is applied with a feathered mask.

Light-wraps in After Effects work best when working in a 32-bit project with an sRGB linear workspace. This provides the most accurate color behaviours, which is especially important in the context of light-wraps. By utilizing a linear workflow, bright highlights in your backgrounds (whether from a sunset, or a bright energy blast) will create the correct intensities and falloffs in your foreground. We recommend using this for professional use.

This free light-wrap plugin in After Effects is ideal for compositing green screen footage. When shooting inside a green screen studio, the lighting conditions are unlikely to match the complex lighting arrangements of the intended background. Using a lightwrap helps to carry your foreground elements coloring closer to what is expected to be seen if the actor was really in the artificial scene.

Light-wraps can also work inversely, adding CG elements to real-world footage. Most 3D rendering software are unable to produce the phenomena that are responsible for a light-wrap, and so in the compositing stage, a light wrap is often required to seamlessly integrate the 3D model into the scene. This makes ProductionCrate’s free light-wrap plugin a powerful and attractive addition to users of Blender, Cinema4D and Houdini.

Crate’s Light Wrap Requirements

• AE CS6 and newer
• MacOS 11.3 or newer
• Windows 7 or newer

• GPU required (integrated GPU such as Intel Iris supported)
• Apple Silicon native. Older mac’s (~2013) with Nvidia cards may not work

This plugin cannot be re-shared, distributed or provided anywhere else without our expressed permission. Contact Support@ProductionCrate.com for any questions. Articles, blogs and videos promoting this free plug-in are encouraged. You are free to use any of our media elements in your promotions, reviews or edits.

Interested in more free plugins? Check out our free Godrays plugin here.

Download 4K Spark VFX assets here.

ProductionCrate has updated its VFX asset library, with over 250 spark effects now available to download and use in any personal or commercial project.

The addition of sparks in explosions, bullet impacts and crashing cars undeniably intensifies the visual spectacle of an action sequence.

Blazing trails of burning hot embers provide incredible contrast and detail, enriching a scene with its turbulent chaotic appearance. They are the icing on the cake of any pyrotechnic special effects and have become a go-to ingredient for many filmmakers to make their action-packed films memorable. Spark effects, when used well, can often elevate a scene to an iconic level, with Michael Bay taking the spotlight in; Transformers, 6 Underground and Pearl Harbor.

“The pyrotechnicians were having fun on this one!” Chris Kelly recalls, while reviewing the footage, “They kept saying things like ‘Oh, I didn’t expect that to happen’ or ‘let’s see what it looks like if we combine these two!’ clearly having a lot of fun. We got some great content out of it that would be nearly impossible to recreate.”

For visual effects artists, sparks offer an avenue for enhancing the realism of explosions and destruction simulations. Using these effectively tackles the challenge of digitally replicating the imperfect chaotic behaviour of explosions seen in the real world. While artists familiar with Houdini are capable of creating spark simulations, this task requires countless hours of R&D and rendering. Using live-action stock footage VFX elements allows editors to immediately apply authentic sparks to their video within minutes; making it an effective solution for projects facing a deadline.

By browsing ProductionCrate’s library of stock footage spark elements, you can instantly preview exactly what each file contains. With the vast selection available to download, you’ll identify the perfect spark effect that your project needs. Whether you need a brief bullet impact, or a star-wars style death star explosion, ProductionCrate aims to cover all creative requirements

These stock footage elements are meticulously prepared by carefully calibrating the recorded footage from the studio. This is done to meet the several requirements for creating professional VFX assets that are ready to be used in feature films, music videos and games. ProductionCrate ensures that all of its content is delivered with these consistent and reliable standards.

4K video resolution gives these video assets a greater range of flexibility. With this, you’re free to position any 4K spark asset around your composition whilst retaining incredible visual quality. The freedom to scale up, rotate and position the spark asset anywhere in the scene without introducing pixelation makes this worthy of even high-end projects exported at a high resolution. This 4K resolution is also crucial to match the realism of the original background footage, allowing artists to naturally integrate this into scenes effortlessly.

The spark VFX assets were recorded at 96FPS on 2 RED cameras. This high framerate captured all of the incredible behaviours seen in sparks, including crackling microbursts, rapid embers bouncing against surfaces, and the explosive initial blast during ignition. To achieve a greater sense of scale, these spark assets are being delivered at 30FPS. These pyrotechnic explosion effects now appear to be several metres high, making them suitable for large car explosions, missile impacts and exciting car chases. To convert these spark effects back to real-time speeds, set their framerate to 96FPS, or adjust the speed to 320%. Slowing down the sparks even further will make them appear even larger in size.

“Our top priority is for these to be composited in seconds, without any technical knowledge or refinement required”, David Blaker explains whilst demonstrating how effortless ProductionCrate has made the process. “It’s really important for us to know that any artist can use these without further instructions, no matter if they’re editing a gunfight or a space battle”.

A huge contributing factor to the quality of these assets comes from the clean-up process. The footage has been thoroughly processed to remove artefacts, background elements, inconsistencies, unfavourable behaviours and various other corrections; providing a clean and polished VFX asset that exclusively features the essential sparks. Further processing has been accomplished to perfectly eliminate any hard edges on the edge of the frame – no sparks will be immediately cut off as they fly out of the footage. This especially helps when the spark effect has been positioned far from the camera or scaled down until edges become visible. Wherever you position your effect, you will have confidence that it will just work with no hassle.

Some assets are designed to fill the entire screen as overlays, whose borders have not had feathering applied. This can easily be re-applied by adding a mask around the edges and feathering the edges to achieve a soft blend.

Complex chemical reactions and the black body spectrum cause real-world sparks to radiate a vast array of colors. It is fair for anyone to assume that sparks simply glow a hot firey yellow. But once observing the pyrotechnic explosions taking place up close, Chris decided it was important to preserve the unique oranges, reds, greens and yellows in the final assets. The imperfections in how sparks are illuminated offer unprecedented realism that is difficult to achieve digitally. However, it is possible to use the tint effect to easily adjust the color of your sparks to match a red sci-fi laser blast or a green magic spell.

During the production of these assets, several categories were produced, each featuring a diverse range of spark behaviours. ProductionCrate aims to meet the requirements of any scene imaginable, and so ambitiously build the largest variety of spark asset styles to date. These include:

Spark burst VFX

These spark explosions are perfect for impactful energetic events. Typically beginning with a sudden expansion of red hot embers, before rapidly decelerating from dragging through the air, the dynamic character of these spark VFX assets make them a favorite of the collection.

Careful adjustments were made to these spark burst stock footage elements to ensure that they worked as modular effects. The timing of all the bursts synced with the first frame, allowing mashups of several spark burst effects to be as easy as stacking the clips together.

Large aerial variations are available that have the iconic appearance of the classic death star explosion. These may also be used for various air-burst effects, such as helicopter explosions, asteroid collisions or electricity pylon destruction.

Ceiling spark VFX

Featuring falling sparks and embers, the ceiling sparks give artists flexibility in the placement of their pyrotechnics. Perhaps an incandescent light bulb is exploding due to a power surge, or chaos is unfolding on the engineering deck of the USS Enterprise. Use these spark video effects to add drama to your music video; saving the need to purchase expensive pyrotechnics and follow complicated safety requirements.

Various ground interactions have been included in several of these spark special effects. Sparks bouncing and breaking apart as they collide with these surfaces create a spectacular appearance that once again is very difficult to replicate in a digital simulation. The illumination cast onto the ground by the sparks has also been retained, helping artists seamlessly blend the falling sparks into their footage.

Bullet impact VFX

Quick and easy to composite, these bullet impact VFX stock footage elements are the go-to for building an action scene. These bullet impact effects feature sudden explosive bursts of sparks that rapidly dissipate in the air as they spread out, providing a visual punch that elevates the intensity of a shot.

These can be used for far more than just bullets; artists can creatively insert these into sword clashes, car crashes, robot fist-fights and laser impacts. With over 100+ bullet impact effects available on ProductionCrate, compositors will never run out of variety when using this in a climatic thriller setpiece.

Constant sparks effects

Perfect for factories filled with heavy industrial machinery, these constant spark effects feature a constant directional stream of sparks. Rapidly discharging from their source, the constant spark stock footage is perfect for creating train-derailment wreckage or intense rocket thruster flames. Multiple durations of these are available to download, ranging from one to ten seconds.

Wild sparks effects

Miscellaneous setups were recorded, often purely experimentally to see what interesting things would happen. One pyrotechnic had the idea to hang a spark gerb on the end of a loose rope. The thrust created caused the spark emitter to fly around wildly, creating a chaotic and exciting effect that Chris decided to keep. Another shot saw a firecracker let loose, detonating several times around the ground. Various setups such as these were processed and included in this spark VFX bundle to offer fun options that can not be found elsewhere, and ProductionCrate is eager to see how these are used in projects.

Charges

These speciality spark effects feature a rapid discharge of an explosive fuse. Useful in planned demolitions, heists and SWAT ambushes, these charges often follow the geometry of interior surfaces, such as floors and doors.

How to add spark VFX to your video

ProductionCrate promises to provide assets that are compatible with the most diverse range of video editing software. Multi-layer compositing software is recommended for the best experience, such as Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premiere Pro, Hitfilm, Nuke and Davinci Resolve. These VFX editing programs allow anybody to perform a vast range of creative adjustments to meet your artistic vision.

For this tutorial, we will be using Adobe After Effects, although the principles can be replicated in any editing software. Begin by adding the background image or video to the composition, with this particular background being sourced from Pexels.

Once you’ve browsed ProductionCrate’s collection of 4K spark VFX assets and found your perfect pyrotechnic, download the effect and import it to your project. From here, you will be able to insert the effect onto your footage simply by layering it over your background.

If you have downloaded a pre-keyed version of a spark effect, you’ll immediately see the results. You may experiment with different blending modes, such as Add, Lighten and Screen, each affecting the behaviours of colors differently. David used Lighten, allowing the darker red tones in the sparks to remain visible against the bright background.

Depending on the geometry of your scene, you may need to mask out any objects that should be obscuring the sparks. In David’s case, the platform of the train station confines the spark explosion to a smaller size, and so with two subtraction masks, we can account for this.

At this stage, you may already be happy with the quality of your spark VFX! The process of adding Hollywood-grade spark VFX only takes a few seconds with the power of pre-keyed stock footage elements. You’re now free to combine the sparks with even more elements, such as smaller bursts, falling embers and explosions. Additionally, you can color correct your sparks to match the tone and temperature of the scene.

If you’re working on a commercial or professional film, you may want to elevate the quality of your work with an additional reflection layer. If you’re unsure whether this is worth it, check out the comparison down below. Reflections offer an additional layer of scene interaction that visually integrates your spark stock footage into the environment. While most composited VFX requires a shadow, illumination effects such as sparks require the opposite, as their light is expected to illuminate surfaces in close proximity.

Begin by duplicating the effect, and flipping it vertically. Already you’ll see that we’ve taken the first step in creating a fake reflection.

Clearly, this does not look correct – in the real world, we expect reflections to be darker on rougher surfaces. We will need an additional layer to inform the reflection layer on how bright it should be, otherwise known as a Matte. Copy the background footage, and name it something appropriate. You may precompose any layers if you need to perform additional masking or positioning.

In your spark reflection layer, add an exposure effect. This helps you adjust the strength of the reflection. A color filter effect will allow you to intensify the coloring of the reflection, as the washed-out white colors in a spark effect may in reality be really bright orange. The final ingredient is the Set Matte effect. When using the background matte layer’s luminance values, we’re approximating the brightness of the reflection based on the brightness of the background. A great example of this in action is on the metallic rail tracks – its bright appearance in the photo indicates that it is a reflective surface, and so we want this to greater influence the opacity of the spark reflection.

Depending on the roughness of your ground, it can be useful to blur the reflection sparks before these effects are applied. This helps evenly distribute the intensity of the light, simulating the  the bumps, crevices and dented surfaces that break up the reflected light.

Those are the main principles that create an incredible spark explosion effect. You can improve this effect even further with the addition of glow effects, smoke, lingering flames and debris. You can find these additional effects and thousands more in ProductionCrate’s library of 10,000+ assets.

ProductionCrate is excited to see what content artists around the world are able to create with this new collection.

Download ProductionCrate’s media kit for the Spark VFX collection here.

Watch this tutorial and learn how you can become Doctor Strange with VFX!

We have some downloadable content to help you on your VFX journey. Check out these links

Magic Circle VFX

Magic Circle Vector

AE Shield Template

Magic Cloak VFX

Magic Cloak 3D Model

There are a multitude of techniques you can use to animate a photo in After Effects, but our favorite approach has to be utilizing a depth map.

This hasn’t always been easy. In the past, artists had to manually create a depth map by estimating and painting the greyscale images themselves. With the advances and accessibility of Machine Learning tools, a better approach is now readily available.

Photoshop is leading the charge with their Neural Filters. Here’s how to create a Depth Map in Photoshop.

Select your photo layer, go to Filter > Neural Filters > Depth Blur and toggle it on. Then select Output Depth Map Only and once it is done processing in the cloud, select Duplicate Layer and hit Okay

Now you can easily animate your image using your depth map and the displacement map plugin in After Effects!

If you’re looking to add some nice dust overlay assets, find them here

Download the fire font typography kit here.

Introducing your new favorite font, the Inferno Typekit! This tool is designed to help you create your own intense flaming title animations without any specialist editing knowledge required.

The characters from A-Z are free to download for all users. Pro members of the ProductionCrate community can access the full bundle of numbers, symbols and lowercase letters.

Each character is a separate video file, allowing you to combine them in any arrangement to create the fire text. This allows you to individually manage each letter, giving limitless animation potential.

The most impressive part is that these are all loopable fire video effects. So if your video is a 10-second commercial or an hour-long broadcast, this fire text can be repeated infinitely with perfect seamless transitions. All you need to do is duplicate the fire text and place it directly after the first, transforming them into one consistent animation.

Fire Text Tutorial

For this, we will be using Adobe After Effects. However, the process is incredibly simple and can easily be replicated in your own editing software, whether that’s Hitfilm, Premiere Pro or Sony Vegas. You’ll also need to download our Inferno Typekit here.

One advantage of using Adobe After Effects is that you can download and install our Typekit Script for Pro users. This tool automatically writes the correct text into your composition, however, you can easily drag and position each layer manually. You can run this script by navigating to File -> Scripts -> Run Script File -> TypeCrate.jsx.

Hit the ProductionCrate logo at the top to open your preferences. Here you can press “choose” to navigate to the folder where you have installed your fire Typekit.

You’re now free to type in the text you want to be generated, here I’ll type “Inferno” and press Generate.

It’s as easy as that!

From here we can stylise the effect. I’ll be adding some of our new ember VFX assets which are easily composited with a screen blend mode.

Another effective bundle of assets are the new mini smoke plume video effects which I will once again use a screen blend for. I’ll make a circular mask and feather it so that it appears that the flames are illuminating the smoke.

Adding plenty of glow effects before applying our final colour corrections to the contrast will complete the look of the shot. I used Crate’s Heat Radiation to create the final grading of the flames, as well as some sharpening to enhance the details in the flames.

ProductionCrate’s mission is to help you create the impossible. Join our growing community today to check out over 10,000+ exclusive VFX, sound effects, music, 3D models and tools.

If you’re interested in our other typekits, check them out here!

To prove the power of ProductionCrate assets, we put them to the test by creating a large-scale city destruction VFX shot.

ProductionCrate is a library of over 10,000+ professional video effects, stock footage, sound effects and 3D models. You’ll be happy to hear that a lot of these assets are free to download, while Pro users can access the entire library, including 4K assets.

We’re constantly updating our library with new and exciting creative content, such as our most recent bundle of 4K dust and smoke accents.

These have been built in with alpha-mattes using a Quicktime PNG codec so that you simply need to drag and drop this into your project. This, with the different file formats available for you to download, means our VFX assets are compatible with After Effects, Hitfilm, Premiere Pro and more.

Another brand new asset that we used in the shot is our 3D alien spaceship model. This is provided in OBJ format, the most widely supported file type, compatible with Blender, 3ds Max, Cinema4D, Element3D and more.

GraphicsCrate provided a huge level of control for the look of the environment. While video assets are good for explosions and lasers, static graphics can give us the power to add cracks, scorch marks and rubble to our scene.

Here’s the full list of assets we used in this video:

FootageCrate

• Fire Burst VFX
• Smoke Plume VFX
• Smoke Burst VFX
• Laser Bolt VFX
• Ground Debris VFX
• Missile Launch VFX

SoundsCrate

• Explosion Sound Effects
• War Ambience Sound Effects

RenderCrate

• Spaceship and Drone 3D Models

GraphicsCrate

• Crack Textures
• Scorch Mark Textures

You can learn exactly how we built this shot by watching our latest tutorial, which covers several valuable compositing techniques that will improve your skills. Enjoy!

If you’re interested in some fantastic new sound effects for your cinematic trailers, take a look at them here.

After Effects scripts are a powerful way to automate and accomplish tasks that would have otherwise taken far longer.

For example, many popular scripts automate the way that you animate, automatically adjusting keyframes in an instant to save you valuable time and get better results.

If you haven’t tried any out yet, you can browse our library of exclusive scripts and plugins. Many of them are free to download, while Pro members of the ProductionCrate community can access the entire collection, as well as over 10,000 other creative assets.

Thankfully, installing these scripts is an incredibly easy process, and works the same on both Windows and Mac. We also ensure that our tools are compatible with the most recent versions of After Effects (CC 2018, CC 2019).

Our example today will be walking through the installation of our free Hologram generator script which has just launched!

1 – Extract the script to “/Adobe After Effects CC 2019/Support Files/Scripts”

If you don’t have any .zip file tools, you can use WinRaR.

Using this software to open the .zip file that you download will allow you to then drag the files to a new location. Make sure that you extract all of the content from the zip file.

Our destination is usually found in the Program Files folder. In most cases the full directory is:

C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe After Effects CC 2019\Support Files\Scripts

But if you are using any other Adobe CC version, feel free to place it there instead.

2 – Create your After Effects composition

Most of our tools won’t work if there’s no footage for it to work on!

3 – Click File -> Scripts -> Run Script File

From here you can then navigate to the place you extracted the files to. Clicking on the “.jsx” file will then launch your chosen script.

Fixing Errors

There’ll always be the chance that something goes wrong. We’ve compiled a list of steps you can take to troubleshoot these issues

Double-Check

Take a moment to quickly look back in the zip folder, and check if all of the contents are also in the After Effects script folder. If it isn’t, simply drag it all over again!

Settings

Go through Edit -> Preferences -> General. A window will open with a bunch of checkboxes, where you can enable “Allow Scripts to Write Files and Access Network”.

Call for backup

If all else fails, you can ask on the forums, the comments below or contact us at Support@ProductionCrate.com, we’ll happily try our best to help out!

What do people mean when they say ‘cinematic’?

You’ve seen the videos suggesting harsh color-grading, or the tutorials that tell you to just throw on some aspect-ratio bars. The truth is, there is no simple one-step solution. Quality footage shot with dynamic range will allow you to create the exact look you want. There are the shooting-steps and then the post processing-steps, you have to work on both if you are going to improve your videos.

Today you’ll get to learn a bit about shooting with log. Alex and Alexsa from Crate’s Camera Corner will break down the basics for utilizing this powerful feature available on many consumer cameras.

The true definition of log can be a bit confusing, so let me try and summarize it. Log images look washed out and flat. Suffice it to say you will not like the look of footage shot with log. At least, not until you color it. Log footage is made to be extremely dynamic, storing color and luminosity with loads of depth, allowing you to truly hone in on whatever look you would like to achieve. Yes, that does mean log footage requires more work than you might be used to. If you’re shooting a vlog you probably won’t want to shoot with log, but if you’re shooting a film or client video then log may be right for you.

Alex and Alexsa shoot with Sony, so they use the S-Log2 setting. Different cameras will have different log formats. Shooting log does take practice, we don’t suggest you try it when the stakes are high. Instead shoot some test footage, or if you are a Pro User you can download this aerial clip shot with log and practice your coloring in post.

An important thing to note is that you need to nail your exposure if you’re shooting with log. It is less forgiving than out of the box picture profiles or standard color outputs. We only suggest you shoot log if you know how to get properly exposed shots and are willing to take the time in post production to hone in on your color.

Check out the first episode of Crate’s Camera Corner

Want to know more? Alex will show you his workflow and approach to coloring in Premiere Pro including how to build your own LUT to load onto your external monitor.

The aerial stock elements Alex mentions can be found here

Want to know the top 5 Mistakes Videographers make on their websites? Check this article out

Adrian Jensen recently created this Pro VFX Course teaching you his techniques for rotoscoping in Adobe After Effects and Mocha AE. Here are some highlights from his course, Pro Users can view the entire roto-series here. If you’re rotoscoping to place video effects behind your subject or to integrate Motion Graphics into your project then this course is for you.

Rotoscope with Masking in After Effects

This is the most common technique for rotoscoping in After Effects. Some think it is antiquated, however we utilize it all the time.

When you’re using masks to roto in After Effects don’t try to use one mask. This may seem like the correct approach at first, but you’ll quick realize how complex and messy it will become. Instead, break up your subject(s)  with multiple masks, this will speed up your workflow tremendously.

A lot of tutorials suggest a fixed number of frames to move before keyframing. Adrian suggests keyframing your masks at the point of most-motion as a better approach.

There are two different kinds of masks you can use, Adrian prefers the Auto-Bezier mask option.

Remember, you can double click your masks and rotate them, this will save time, especially for rigid body objects. You don’t have to move each mask point by point every time.

Color code your masks. This will help distinguish them from one another, and will help if your mask looks too similar to the subject you are trying to roto out.

Rotoscoping with Mocha AE

Adrian’s preferred method for rotoscoping is Mocha AE.

Mocha AE comes with After Effects and is a terrific tool for motion tracking and rotoscoping work.

You can track multiple masks (or ‘layers’) at one time with Mocha AE. Adrian still recommends multiple masks for your subject, instead of attempting one mask.

When using Mocha AE set your spline up and let it track all the way through before making any adjustments.

Lock your mask when you are done with it, you can turn off the Gear icon to disable processing.

Want to learn more? Visit Adrian’s Pro Rotoscoping Course and get your roto-game leveled up. Adrian covers masking, Mocha, the Roto Brush Tool and even techniques to avoid rotoscoping entirely.

Story: The Great Unseen Equalizer in VFX

There is an art to using VFX as an unseen tool. So much consideration goes into the curating of what you, the viewer, see at any given moment, that it is easy to forget about what you don’t see in a shot. But more often than not, what you don’t see is where the best and most impactful story moments lie.

In VFX, just because we can do anything and everything doesn’t always mean we should. So often audiences and media focus on what we can see and what is shown on screen in VFX. When The Avengers and Game of Thrones are the baseline for visual excellence, the bar is pretty high. Freeze frame any moment from those shows and the still image is a renaissance painting.  (Unless there is Starbucks cup.)

But ultimately consideration for VFX emerges from a directorial, editorial story perspective. A visual should not exist simply for the sake of existing.

Curious about what are some of the ways to use VFX with restraint or purpose in more subtle and useful ways?

Back to the Basics and Classics

A sense of film history is the best tool you can use when figuring out your shot. Think back to a world of Alfred Hitchcock and Rod Serling; a world of storytelling where it is not so much what you show, but what you don’t and how that restraint can serve the better purpose of your story.

Take for example, one of my most favorite episodes of The Twilight Zone, Eye of The Beholder (Watch it on Hulu.)

The Twilight Zone was created during the infancy of television, an episode conceived in 1960, almost 60 years ago. In Eye of the Beholder, the filmmakers obfuscate, misdirect, and use light and contrast as an unspoken character. The claustrophobic visual language creates a foreboding slow build, leading to a masterful, gasp worthy reveal.

Yet, you would think that since it’s almost 100 years old, it should be primitive in its filmmaking, with all that limitation of technology. Rather the opposite,  Eye of the Beholder manages to pack a gut-punch allegory on Nazism and conformity, against the backdrop of a totalitarian state, using mostly shadows, concerted camera movement and actors backs to camera. Even with such heady topics, nothing in the production feels cheapened, nothing feels lost to age, it holds up remarkably well as a gem of perfection.

With just light and camera direction The Twilight Zone achieves masterful commentary about the perceived value of homogeny in beauty. What we, the viewer, don’t see informs the story just as much as what we are allowed to see. This gives so much weight to the double-blind reveal. What does her face look like? Is she a monster?! What do the doctors look like? Eye of the Beholder remains riveting and engaging television by any modern measure. If they can do that with so little, there’s nothing you can’t do.

Technically Difficult and Time Consuming? Yes, if it serves story.

Way back in 1948, Alfred Hitchcock audaciously sought to create a seemingly single take film.  Rope was an amazing and difficult orchestration, with entire magazines of film taking up the length of each take. Hitchcock’s use of “the television technique” was unheard of and novel and considered by many “daring” for a mainstream director at the time.

This single take (“one shot”) approach popularized by Hitchcock has been adapted, paid homage to over and over since then, which only stands to show how clever the concept was in its infancy. From The X-Files to Birdman to Mr Robot, each new attempt at this concept acknowledges its roots and predecessors then ups the ante and reliance on VFX to create the seamless intended story effect. The most recent entry in this category may be to the 59 minute 3D shot in Long Day’s Journey Into Night.

Don’t be discouraged if something technically difficult requires testing, rehearsal, pre-vis and blocking. A deliberate approach harkens back to my thoughts on Mise en Place for production. When you are able to plan for VFX during production process versus an afterthought, you’re putting they story front and center.

Mr. Robot is unique and well known for capturing accurate technical details about computing and hacking, so it’s no surprise that an immense amount of technical preparation went into creation of the episode with a special focus on the shots and camera movement.

This breakdown video shows everything from general environment clean up, stitching, tracking and compositing of multiple takes. All this is required to create a seamless and invisible shot. Read more from the director of Mr. Robot’s eps3.4_runtime-err0r.r00.

Imagine if Alfred Hitchcock had the same kind of VFX capability. In Rope, Hitchcock wound up re-shooting the ending segments, because he was dissatisfied with the color of the sunset. Today, perhaps he would ask his team environment painters (Digital Matte Painters) to paint and adjust the background accordingly.  

Use Constraints to Elevate Story

Figuring out how to “make it work” in filmmaking is a feature not a bug. Famously there is a story about a director that wanted to shut down an entire freeway for a large multi-car crash scene. With a logistical nightmare of permits, stunt men and traffic the Producer griped “Can’t we just make it a reverse shot in a telephone booth?”

Never has there been a more honest and funny acknowledgement of such constraints than in a movie sequel like the Phil Lord & Chris Miller‘s 22 Jump Street – in which, if you didn’t know, is an entire movie is based on the construct of what a sequel is, and what happens in sequels. It’s fun.

Police Captain Dickerson, played by Ice Cube, makes it crystal clear in this movie, there is no budget for a big police chase like last time. As a reminder, Jonah Hill’s character yells to turn the car “whichever way is cheaper!”

This is called “making it work.” With a wink and a nod, 22 Jump Street opts to make all the action happen off screen.

It’s a funny moment with loud off screen banging and crashing. If this were a large tent-pole movie perhaps there would be hundreds of interior shots of CG robots and equipment being destroyed in real time. As the cars exit the other side of the building, Channing Tatum’s character quips: “Wow, there was a lot of expensive stuff in there.” We’re all in on the joke now.

The next time you feel you have to “show it all” think about these examples of unseen story in VFX, remember your filmmaking roots, commit to the vision, see it through and make something awesome.

Check out this fantastic video showing off some great hidden VFX. Remember, Visual Effects are a tool, just like any other. Don’t be limited in how you utilize them.

David Fincher utilizes Visual Effects to achieve what he cannot in a real-life scenario.

You can download these HD bullet impact effect here

It’s been a while since we last added bullet impact effects to our FootageCrate VFX library, but this update has been worth the wait!

12 incredible new impact assets are a part of our latest collection, with 3 being completely free to download now. You can find the rest of our dust and debris elements here.

These action-packed VFX elements range from 1080p to 4K, meeting the professional standards that you need to make your compositing project stand out. Each is at a consistent 30 fps, and have been pre-keyed to maintain perfect transparency, making it easy to edit them into your shot. Alternatively, you may choose the greenscreen versions which can be downloaded by selecting the MP4 file from the dropdown list.

If you haven’t subscribed to our Youtube channel, we would like to introduce you to our show VFXperiments, where we breakdown the magic behind creating these incredible effects for our community. Our latest episode covers these exciting bullet impact effects!

So now that you’ve caught up with how awesome these effects are, let’s take a look at how we can use them.

The first step is to pick which asset best fits your shot. Is the bullet impacting the floor? Perhaps a wall? Whatever the case, the available variations will meet your needs.

Grab your footage, (in this case I’m using a photo from Pexels.com) and use a compositing software such as Adobe After Effects or Hitfilm and add the bullet impact into your project. If your footage is moving, you can use one of the built-in camera trackers immerse the effect into your video.

Luckily for us, adding these bullet impacts to your video is surprisingly easy thanks to its built-in alpha channel! All we need to do is color correct the layer to match the footage. This can be achieved by applying a tint effect and selecting the colors of the impacted surface as the color to blend into. Making it slightly brighter will then give it the atmospheric-glow that we see in the real world.

Adding some shading can also work wonders! Take a look at the bottom left dust burst for example, where half of the smoke has been covered in shadow. You can recreate this by duplicating the dust burst and having the lower layer darker than the one above. The top layer can then be masked so that only the area in sunlight is visible. This is one of the most effective ways to make your bullet-impact look lifelike!

You can use the tint effect for other scenarios too, with the video covering how to use these impact assets to create an alien sci-fi weapon effect. Additionally, you can tint the footage red to create an instant blood burst!

We’re excited to see what you can create with these bullet impact VFX – get started by downloading them today.

If you’re interested in our other huge collection of assets to fuel your creative projects, check out our tank VFX assets.

We started our Youtube Channel in 2009, 10 Years ago.

ProductionCrate’s subscriber count is just around 68,000 today. In the last 365 days we have grown by 44,369 subscribers, about 65% of our entire subscriber count. That’s about 9 years of little to no growth, and then an awesome turn of events.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I know we are not a massive channel. We’re not quite at the 100,000 Subscribers mark, or anywhere close to the Gold Play Button’s 1 Million. But we are growing, and most of that growth has happened really fast. I’ve received a few requests asking ‘How do I grow my Youtube Channel?‘ and ‘How do I get More Youtube Subscribers?’ so I figured this was a good time to share what we have learned so far. Keep in mind, this is what worked for us, it won’t necessarily work for all creators!

Format is key. Trust the format.

This is my holy mantra. The words that bring me back anytime my brain goes off on a tangent or if I’m not sure of my next step. You need to develop a format for your channel, show, series, whatever. There is a very direct, very clear connection between our formatted series and our Youtube channel’s growth.

Some of you are familiar with the Saturday Morning Tutorials, a weekly tutorial series we have developed. The first episode went live Jun 8, 2018. Right about the time our subscriber count turned for the better. It was different from other tutorials we have made in one big way, it has a tight format.

By format, I mean a system of steps, rules, branding and consistency that keeps the entire series cohesive. We start each episode off with our title animation and the exact same Voice Over, then jump right into the narrative sketch. After is the Channel’s title animation and then we jump into the tutorial. The series always has the same two hosts, which allows for some ad-lib banter. It has an ongoing story with recurring characters, which connects episodes. We try to shoot with a regular schedule, shooting two sketches in a day and releasing them over the next two weeks, on the same day of each week, and the same time. The system allows us to create faster content but also helps us stay true to the overall concept of the series. If you want to learn more, check out this Making Of video.

In with the Good, Out with the Bad.

We didn’t start the series with an extremely tight format. Things evolve naturally, if something worked, we stuck with it. If it didn’t, it was scrapped and we tried something new. Don’t stick with something if it isn’t working, try a new angle or concept. Saturday Morning Tutorials didn’t start with a title animation or a conscious choice to maintain character arc, those are just things that seemed to work well, and so we made sure to maintain consistency with  them in each episode. Things got progressively better and tighter, and our audience continued to grow. Now we are trying to apply this success to new series, like VFXperiments and Davesplanations, both shows with an active format but still loose enough that we can adapt them as they develop.

Play to your strengths.

Don’t try to mimic another channel’s personality. Adrian and I work together every day, we have developed our own banter and that translates well for the tutorials. Our rhythm works because it is us, if we were trying to mimic Bob Ross we would fail horribly.

You’ll never find success if you’re making content you don’t care about. Follow your interests, passions or curiosity. If you’re bored making your videos, anyone who watches them will be bored too. It will be nearly impossible to maintain consistency and you’ll dread having to edit each one. Don’t do it.

Get Better.

Your audio needs work. You can get better lighting. Your edit can be tighter, or maybe you can let that shot sit for longer. Your workflow is slow or maybe you’re using outdated techniques. Your work will never be perfect. Don’t get cemented in your ways. Keep learning, stay up to date on your equipment, and keep trying new things. If there is one glaring, obvious annoyance you feel about your work then change it. It is too easy to be complacent, you need to be active to grow.

Don’t Burn Out.

Some of our episodes are awesome. We went above and beyond, polishing every cut and fine tuning every scene. Other episodes are just so-so. The latter usually happens when we’re reaching a burn out point. Too much work, not enough passion. If your heart isn’t in it, it’s going to show. For us, we took some time off. We tried new shows, wrote new characters, and found the passion again. It won’t last forever, but that’s okay. We’d prefer to take a moment to fall in love with the work again instead of forcing ourselves to hate it.

Do you have any tips and tricks you use? Or any questions you would like to ask? Disagree with everything I have said or found a bit of value? Let me know if the comments below!

]]> https://news.productioncrate.com/8-bit-in-after-effects/ Tue, 14 May 2019 18:10:36 +0000 https://news.productioncrate.com/?p=2240 8-Bit is back! You’ve probably noticed the growing popularity of this retro style. We’ve seen it in titles and openers, logo animations, indie games, VFX Shorts and many more. Let’s take a look at how to achieve this style. We’ll be using After Effects but if you’re a Hitfilm User you can find an awesome […]]]>

8-Bit is back! You’ve probably noticed the growing popularity of this retro style. We’ve seen it in titles and openers, logo animations, indie games, VFX Shorts and many more. Let’s take a look at how to achieve this style. We’ll be using After Effects but if you’re a Hitfilm User you can find an awesome tutorial here.

We’ll show you how to make this 8-Bit style in AE, but you can also download the preset here

For our effect we chose this aerial explosion from the popular Anime and Toon Category to give it that 8-Bit look.

Import your clip or effect into After Effects.

A popular technique in AE for achieving the 8-Bit look is by using the Mosaic Effect, but we find it far too difficult to achieve the perfect squares and pixelation needed to pull this effect off. Instead, we’re going to use CC Block Load.

Drag CC Block Load onto your footage. Set the Completion to 0. We set our Scans to 3. For the number of scans, use to your discretion. Uncheck the Start Cleared selection.

Classic 8-Bit games were limited in what colors were available. While our explosion doesn’t appear to have too many colors, we can still limit the variation and add some color degradation with the Posterize Effect.

Add the Posterize Effect to your layer. You will instantly notice some color degradation. Play with the level. Depending on your footage you can find the right look for you. We suggest adding these effects to individual layers but staying consistent with the CC Block Load scan number for pixel consistency.

One additional item you can change is your composition’s framerate. We are going to change our comp’s from 29.97fps to 15fps. To do this you can go to Composition>Settings or just hit Control K (Command K for Mac) and change your framerate there.

For the final step we want to get rid of those semi-transparent pixels. This can be done quickly with the Levels effect. Drop the levels effect onto your layer, and select the Alpha option from the drop-down.

Select the Alpha Input White number (32768) and type /2 for (32768/2) and deselect. Now your number will read half of that, or 16384. Copy that number and paste it into your Input Black. Now you have crunched out those semi-transparent pixels!

Now you have your 8-Bit style. Mess around with the Anime FX and see what works best for you.

Want to keep learning? Check out this Bouncey Text Tutorial in After Effects

Ever wanted to know how to make bouncy text in After Effects, per-Character, as quickly as possible? It’s really easy! The Text Animator in After Effects is actually quite easy to customize, with tons of hidden features. This is a great introduction if it is your first time using it.

First off, type in your text you want to bounce with the Text Tool (Ctrl + T)

Toggle down the arrow to the left of your text (Box 1 Below)  so you can see the Animate button.

Toggle the Animate Button (Box 2 Below)

Select the Position Parameter from the Drop Down (see left)

Note all the other different parameters you can animate here!Opacity, scale, skew, rotation can all be animated independently or all together. For us, we will just use the Position parameter for this tutorial.

After selecting ‘Position’ you will see the Animation Controls (see below image). There you will see ‘Add’ with an arrow similar to the ‘Animate’ arrow. Click that. ‘Property’ and ‘Selector’ will appear, scroll over and click selector and choose ‘Wiggly’. If you are familiar with the Wiggle Expression this is a similar tool specifically for Text Animation.

For now, just select Wiggly, let’s get that text bouncing.

This is another great place to explore around if this is your first time trying the Animator tool for text! Notice the Expression option? There is a lot of powerful uses there, we will return to it in another tutorial.

Notice the Wiggly Selector (1 Box Below) You will see the familiar Position parameter and stopwatch. Next to that you will see the X and Y coordinates. We want this text to bounce up and down on the Y Axis. Let’s Increase that number to something low. 18 Works for our purposes.

If you hit the spacebar and preview you will notice that your text is already bouncing! If you want to customize further, that’s easy. Notice the Range Selector (Box 2, see right image) You can control the End or Start of the bounce on your text.

Use the stopwatch to create keyframes. You can have your text bounce Left to Right or Right to Left easily.

Drop down your Wiggly Selector (see below) for even more parameters you can customize. Change the speed of your bounce by increasing or decreasing your Wiggles/Second. Change your correlation if you want less, more or all characters to bounce together or completely independently. There are many settings here, the best way to learn is to do, find the right animation for your project!

Download HD UFO VFX Assets Here

Whether they’re friendly or not (usually the latter), no Sci-Fi movie is complete without alien spaceships flying over a city. They’re some of the coolest VFX shots out there.

We’re super happy to be introducing these new HD UFO effects, all available for you to download! We even have a free option, so this tutorial is for all of you.

Inspired by Independence day, District 9 and Arrival, we want to show you how you can create your own blockbuster CGI alien spaceship. So let’s get started with the tutorial!

You can use almost any compositing software for this tutorial, whether that’s Nuke, Hitfilm, or Premiere Pro. I’ll be using After Effects!

We’ll first need the city that our outer-worldly visitors will be hanging out over. I’ve gone for the popular choice, New York City! You can download the same image here from Pexels.

You can apply the same VFX techniques to a video if you would rather use that! If you haven’t yet downloaded the UFO assets, download the effects here.

We can drop our first spaceship into our shot! You’ll find that it’s already looking incredibly realistic without any work needed to be done. FootageCrate elements are all designed to make your workflow as easy as possible!

The first adjustment we want to make is ensuring that the lighting is in the correct direction. You’ll see that the sunlight is coming from the left side of the screen, so if the UFO asset doesn’t match, simply flip it horizontally. This makes the scene seem consistent.

The next small adjustment we can perform is adding a tint effect. Make both colors match the sky, so that the UFO appears to be distant in the sky. Typically, you’ll increase the tint if the spaceship is larger or further away to give a sense of scale.

Feel free to go crazy and add even more of our spaceship assets! Once again you can change the tint levels so that the closer spaceships have less of it applied (which you can see in the top right asset).

If you have buildings that are supposed to obstruct the view of some of these VFX assets like I have here, you can either rotoscope the foreground, or use a simple color key with the sky as the target! We can then use this duplicated layer above our UFO effects to put the buildings in front.

And it’s as easy as that! In no time we have our VFX UFO invasion underway. Add any final corrections you would like to your scene. I’ve even used our Auto-Cinemabar plugin to quickly create the cinema aspect ratios in a single click!

We’ll love to see what you create with these UFO VFX assets! If you’re tempted to create your own UFO animations, Pro Users can download our model here.

If you’re interested in more compositing tutorials, check out our Helicopter tutorial.

Download Crate’s Camera Shake script here (Available for Pro Members)

There’s something unnatural about the well-known wiggle expression. It’s fair to say that this sort of shake is too perfect.

If you watch over a hand-held video recording, you’ll be quick to notice the immense differences between handheld footage and the go-to wiggle expression.

While the wiggle expression does create a shake, it’s mathematical, where it smoothly interpolates randomly generated keyframes between intervals of time. In the real world, camera shake has a huge range of factors that can influence it: footsteps, wind, and weight of the camera are just a few!

This is why we have created our After Effects script, Crate’s Camera Shake!

The toolkit can create a fully-realistic camera shake with only the click of a button.

It’s fast, fully customisable, and is packed with features. So how does it work?

We’ve tracked and analyzed several different pieces of footage, all recorded in different scenarios. Earthquakes, running, handheld and more are all part of the bundle to choose from. Once you browse the built-in library of shake presets, you can then apply it directly to your footage. It’s that simple!

If you’re seeking more control, we’ve also included a variety of customisable options to perfect your shake.

Amplitude – The strength of the shake.

Frequency – The speed of the shake.

Skip Keys – Reduce the density of keyframes (a value of 2 will place a keyframe every 3 frames instead of 1).

Random Seed – Add more unique randomness to your shake.

Motion Blur – Have the script automatically set up motion blur to the shake.

Auto Scale – The script will calculate the perfect size for your footage so that the shake does not have it drift out of frame.

We’ve also implemented a Jolt for you to choreograph your perfect set of shakes. The Jolt will be applied wherever your timeline scrubber is on your timeline. You can generate a null with the shake or apply directly to your layer.

These can be applied directly into the shake animation wherever you need, and give an impact to your footage. Jolts are perfect for explosions, impactful footsteps, or something rushing past the camera.

Crate’s Camera Shake After Effects Script is exclusive for our Pro Users. The Pro Content continues to grow rapidly, sign up today!

We’ll be using this script in nearly every video we create and know you’ll find it as useful as we do.

Want to check out our other scripts? See them here

Download HD snow effects for your videos here

With only a few days to go until Christmas takes over, it’s time to go over one of the most fundamental uses of VFX compositing – snow!

Whether you’re shooting a Christmas comedy or a reflective and chilling scene for your film, snow can always help add value to your project. But not everyone has access to weather manipulating machines or industrially sized snow cannons, and so in these cases, we must rely on VFX to composite the snow into our footage.

FootageCrate has a huge library of snowfall effects, ranging from realistic to cartoon styled. Similar to all of our content, these snow effects are pre-keyed, meaning that transparency is preserved when you drop the snow footage on top of your shot without any further hassle! You can take a look at our collection of snow effects here.

Let’s get started with the tutorial! You can use almost any software for this, including After Effects, Hitfilm, Nuke and Premiere Pro!

I’ve taken this stock image from Pexels.com, so if you want to follow along, be my guest and download the image.

One step I’ve often seen people skipping is that they don’t add depth to their snow effect. What I mean by this is that it’s quite clearly visible that there’s just a snow effect simply being placed on the footage, giving it a “flat” feel. We’re going to give the snow volume by first creating a solid that matches the colour of the lighter clouds, and making it so that the further away the footage is, the higher the opacity. This can be done through masking or opacity painting.

Already we’ve given a nice volumetric feel to the scene. This will look like snow that is too distant to be seen by the camera individually, and so appears like a cloud.

We can now mask out or rotoscope the foreground so that it doesn’t sit behind this fog.

It’s now time to drop the snow effect into our video. I’ve taken two different effects from the FootageCrate website, which is the “snow background” and the “slow snow falling”. I’ll have the first placed behind the foreground, and the second in front of it. This makes it appear as if the subject is sandwiched between the two snow assets so that they feel part of the scene!

Apply these snow effects with an add/lighten/screen transfer mode so that the dark halos around the snowflakes are invisible, and admire your now far more chilling scene! You can add further colour corrections to then cool the image with bluish tints.

Thanks for reading this tutorial! If you’d like to learn more VFX, take a look at our helicopter compositing tutorial!

Download HD Helicopter VFX assets here

Our brand new helicopter assets have landed in the FootageCrate library, giving you the power to create your own stunning action movie VFX!

Over 30 exciting elements are available for you, with some of them being free to download. We’ve made sure the selection covers all of the intense helicopter sequences you’ll need to build the perfect narrative for your project.

The collection includes take-offs, flybys, static graphics and even a spectacular helicopter crash.

It’s time to get started with the tutorial, so you can learn how to add these helicopter VFX into your own videos! We’ll be going over the general workflow which covers the steps you need to take to composite all of our helicopter assets. I’ll also be using After Effects today, but you can replicate the steps in almost any compositing software such as Hitfilm and Nuke.

We’ll first need a background, which today will be this beautiful aerial mountain scenery from Pexels, but feel free to use your own!

Once you’ve created a composition featuring your background, find a helicopter asset that best suits your shot. There’s many to choose from, so you’ll have no trouble finding one that you want. I recommend that you also consider the lighting when deciding which effect you want for your VFX. Here I’ll be using a looping shot from the side:

Drop the effect into a new layer of your composition, and position it where you need it. Since the background and the helicopter don’t have matching sources of light, I flipped the landscape horizontally in order to have the light coming from the same direction. This goes a long way when it comes to making sure your effect fits naturally into your scene!

The shot is already looking pretty good, but we’ll perform some colour correction to make it perfect. I used a curves effect to lightly decrease the red as well as increase the blue, which matched the chilling tone of the environment.

No action scene is complete without some background motion blur, which also gives the illusion that the helicopter is moving at great speeds. It also helps highlight the main feature of our shot, so that it stands out from the rest.

This is the third tutorial in a row which has made use of our ProductionCrate Lightwrap generator, so if you haven’t checked it out already download it here! This tool is an absolute game-changer when it comes to compositing inside After Effects. It takes the colour of the environment and blends it into the edges of the asset, making it seem as though light from the scene is bouncing off our helicopter and into the camera. The default settings will do for most scenes, so hitting “Generate” should do the trick, but feel free to adjust the settings if needed.

You’ve made it to the end! We now have a photorealistic helicopter VFX effect in almost no time at all thanks to ProductionCrate’s helicopter library. It’s time to add our final colour corrections to give it the cinema-quality tone we want to see (here I had increased the contrast and saturation).

If you want to learn even more compositing tricks, take a look at our Nuclear Bomb VFX tutorial: