Tag Archive for: alien

How to create Alien Invasion VFX – Tutorial

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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.

Download 4K Smoke Burst VFX Assets

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

SoundsCrate

RenderCrate

GraphicsCrate

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.

Spaceship UFO VFX – Tutorial

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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.

Download UFO Spaceship VFX Tutorial

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.

Download UFO Spaceship VFX Tutorial

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.

Download UFO Spaceship VFX Tutorial

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).

Download UFO Spaceship VFX Tutorial

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.

Download UFO Spaceship VFX Tutorial

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!

Download UFO Spaceship VFX Tutorial

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.

HD Planet Textures for your Space Scenes

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Download your HD realistic planet textures here!

Planets are the unchallenged champions of establishing shots, with the power to transport a viewer to the other side of the universe in an instant. This is why some of the most iconic imagery in cinema history has featured these planetary spacescapes. Think of almost every opening scene in Star Wars, or the first minute of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Wall-E does a great job of using planets for storytelling too, as viewers can see how our entire planet has become polluted into a brown-muddy looking ball in future history.

We’ve taken the step to create these ultra HD planet texture maps to help you build your own space-scenes. Knowing that the universe has too many planets to count, we’ve made sure to feature many variations such as deserts, volcanic and ice planets.

How do you create the planets? Well, these textures can be applied to spherical surfaces either in 3D modelling programs such as 3ds Max, Cinema4d or Blender. If you’re wanting to keep it simple with Adobe After Effects, you can use the CC Sphere effect (in the Perspective category) to make the planet even quicker! Game creators can apply these textures in Unity to help make their sci-fi game even more stunning!

We have gone ahead and built out additional maps for even more control, such as height maps and illumination maps for the volcanic planets, so 3D artists can take their renders even further by giving true detail to their terrain.

Martian Planet VFX

Creating using our planet texture maps!