Tag Archive for: vfx

ProductionCrate Monthly Update: May 2023

NEW CONTENT:
4K Destruciton VFX (14 Free)

3D Crashed Car Models (UE Optimized)

Unreal Engine Ninja Weapons (UE Optimized)

Dolphin Model (FBX Swim Animation Invluded)

Disco Music 

Musical Idents

SOFTWARE UPDATES:
ProducitonCrate AR App

VIDEOS:
Compositing in After Effects Beginners
ZBrush for Beginners

VFX CONTEST:
Theme: VFX Battle Chain
Prize: NEEWER SL90 RGB Video Light

Download The VFX Starter Pack – 1


FootageCrate is offering an amazing free bundle of video effects.

 

Step 1: Register and Sign in to a free account

Step 2: Click Here to Download

Step 3: Unzip the downloaded folders!

Step 4: Share with anyone who wants to get started with VFX

 



VFX can be a daunting field to get into, but FootageCrate makes it easy. Even if you have no prior experience, you can learn the basics in minutes.
Compositing in VFX involves combining multiple images, frames or renders. This process can range from complex compositions with hundreds of various elements and render passes, to simple overlays of one rendered element on top of your video. Below we have an example of 3 separately layers composited together. We have the background, the subject and the VFX element.

Basic VFX compositing

To help you get started, FootageCrate is offering the VFX Starter Pack 1, a collection of 50 pre-made visual effects. This pack is nearly 3GB worth of video effects content. These elements are high-quality and created by professional CGI artists. Packs 2 and 3 are planned for 2023.

This downloadable collection of 50 Free VFX features assets from the following libraries

Explosion VFX
Magic VFX
Fire and Spark VFX
Motion Graphics
Transition Effects
SciFi VFX
Muzzle Flash VFX

And several more. These are all available from FootageCrate’s free library, and even include several 4K assets ordinarily limited to user’s with a Pro Subscription.

The effects come with RGB+A, or Red, Green Blue, and Alpha channels.  All effects containing transparency are ProRes 4444 Files. A few of the files are H.264. Framerates vary from 30fps to 60fps. The Alpha channel controls the transparency in an image or video. These effects come with a transparent background, allowing you to easily drag and drop them onto your footage.

Download Debris and Destruction VFX
If you’re looking for free VFX software, ProductionCrate recommends Hitfilm Free or DaVinci Resolve. The 50 Free Effects Pack is compatible with iMovie, After Effects, Premiere, Filmora, Final Cut, DaVinci, Hitfilm and all major editing software.

If you’re looking for even more VFX content, find thousands of Free Video Effects here. You can download all of these with a Free VFX Account, limited to five downloads a day. If you want even more content, access 50 daily downloads from the entire ProductionCrate library with a Pro Account.

interview with professional vfx artist david blaker

Want more free content? Any item not marked with a star from these production libraries is free to download.

RenderCrate has Hundreds of Free 3D Models

SoundsCrate has thousands of music and sound effects Free to Download

If you have any questions, email the ProductionCrate team at Support@ProductionCrate.com.

Creating Dynamic Space Animations in 3D

Professional VFX and mo-graph artist Jonathan Winbush demonstrates how to create simple 3D space scene animations. He did it by using Cinema 4D, Unreal Engine, and After Effects. Additionally, all of the assets used came from ProductionCrate. These include 3D Space models, Sci-Fi Sound Effects, and our brand new Space HDRI’s.

First, he used Cinema 4D to place the camera, asteroids, and ship in 3D space. Next, he brings the project into Unreal Engine for adjusting the 3D materials & HDRI. Finally, he brings the rendered .EXR file into After Effects to composite and adjust the different passes.

You can see Jonathan’s full breakdown on the WINBUSH YouTube Channel. Be sure to follow him for more 3D content and tutorials. Sign up for a ProductionCrate membership to start download our space VFX assets.

Download 4K Wall Cracking VFX

Surface cracking effects can add authenticity to your scenes. They can make earthquake VFX feel more realistic. Add them to scenes with explosions and apocalyptic bunkers.  We added 19 new 4K cracking visual effects to FootageCrate.

These include flat surface cracks and wall cracking effects. The flat surfaces are great for applying onto 2D and 3D surfaces as animated textures. The wall cracks include debris particulate for extra realism. These effects pair nicely with the 4K ground crack effects on FootageCrate.

Download Realistic 4K Earthquake VFX

We have added over 30 new ground-shattering and earthquake VFX to download from FootageCrate. These 4K visual effects come in a variety of angles, shapes, and speeds.

Cracking surface effects are versatile for VFX and 3D Artists. Composite them into After Effects to enhance impacts within the scene, or use as animated textures in your favorite 3D software.

Sign up for a Pro account to download these video effects. Pair these VFX with authentic Earthquake sound effects from SoundsCrate. Check out the tutorial below, where we go over how to add these VFX in After Effects.

Download Free Light Wrap Plugin for After Effects

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.
  • Free After Effects Light Wrap Plugin Comparison Background Blur
  • Wrap Width – How far into the foreground the light-wrap extends
  • Free After Effects Light Wrap Plugin Comparison Wrap Width
  • 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
  • Free After Effects Light Wrap Plugin Comparison Tint
  • Luminance Bias – Use this to control how much influence the foreground’s luminance has on the intensity of the light wrap
  • Free After Effects Light Wrap Plugin Comparison Luma Bias
  • 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.
  • Free After Effects Light Wrap Plugin Comparison Premult

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

Software:
  • AE CS6 and newer
  • MacOS 11.3 or newer
  • Windows 7 or newer
Hardware:
  • 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 200+ 4K Spark Stock Footage Assets for VFX

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.”

Bus speeding off a ramp with Spark VFX assets that are available to download

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.

Empty Train Station in After Effects

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.

How to add 4K Spark VFX to your video in After Effects

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.

How to add 4K Spark VFX to your video in After Effects

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.

How to add 4K Spark VFX to your video in After Effects

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.

How to add 4K Spark VFX to your video in After Effects

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.

How to add 4K Spark VFX to your video in After Effects

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.

How to add 4K Spark VFX to your video in After Effects

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.

Download Free 3D Models for your Epic Scenes

A few months ago we released the free 3D Castle Pack. Since then, over 10,000 creators have used it in their projects. We knew we’d have to go even bigger for our next free 3D assets kit. So we did.

Download the free 3D Models in the Industrial Kit and gain access to hundreds of amazing assets.

Download Free 3D Models

This pack contains tons of prefabricated builds to save you time and effort. Build your own mega-structures in minutes. Our prefabs are extraordinarily easy to use. Everything is modular. Constructing detailed scenes has never been so fun!

Download free 3d warehouse model

All downloadable 3D models are compatible with Blender, Cinema4D, Maya, Houdini and 3DSMax. The Unreal Engine Kit is reserved for our Pro Users, and is perfect if you’re looking for 3D Assets for Games, however you are free to convert the 3D Models to Unreal yourself.

Choose from 3D platforms, pipes, trusses, power supplies, ladders, buttons and lights. Build out your worlds in your program of choice to make some high-quality free 3D renders!

Download Free 3D Kit Assets

Find and download the best free 3D assets from RenderCrate and tag us in your projects!

Dropbox link below for media and press purposes only. Contact Niko@ProductionCrate.com for Access

Download High Resolution Images and Video of the Industrial Kit

Download Free Effects and VFX Artist Contest

Every month we update you with the latest downloadable video effects assets! Last month we added hundreds of new VFX, as well as new music, sound effects 3D models.

You can enter the 10 Second VFX Contest Here

Download Explosion Spark Effects Here

Get royalty free children friendly music here

Download Pro and Free Funny Sound Effects 

Download Royalty Free 3D Vehicles

 

 

Download new Magic VFX

In our latest Monthly Crate Update, Niko shows off all the latest content you can access with your membership!

 

Find Magic Cloak Animations Here

Scarlet Witch inspired Magic Here

Raven and Crow Effects

3D Spaceships

and enter the next VFX Contest Here: https://contests.productioncrate.com/