Tag Archive for: tutorial

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

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 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.

New 4K Dust Overlays

Our new Dust Overlays are impressively versatile. We’ve worked hard to bring you the best assets for the job. Choose from Gusts and Looping options to add dust, snow, ash or pollen to your scene! We currently have 15 for you to choose from, with 4 free for anyone to use.

Here is a quick tutorial using the Dust Overlays in Premiere Pro, but all of these techniques can be replicated easily in any major editing software (After Effects, Hitfilm, Final Cut, DaVinci)

 

How to create Alien Invasion VFX – Tutorial

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.

Quickstart Guide to Audio in Premiere Pro

In this QSG, we look at working with audio for filmmakers, editors, and mograph artists.

Here are the essentials you need to know to quickly create high-quality audio in Premiere Pro.

 

Clipping is Bad

Premiere Pro measures audio in decibels. The audio should never hit 0 decibels on the meter, which causes clipping. Clipping is bad and causes the distortion of your audio.

Recorded music often comes in hot (clipping) so I generally reduce the volume in the project before putting the clips into a sequence. Put all your music clips in one bin (its a folder, all the other Adobe apps call them folders). Press G to bring up Audio Gain, so you can change the loudness/gain for all the tracks at once. Experiment with this, but generally setting your music to -20ish is a good starting point if you have narration/dialogue with it. If you are just cutting to music, you could pick “normalize max peaks to -6, ensuring the music a good level but that it won’t clip. As a general guide,  you want your main audio to average around -12 and not peak above -6.

 

Clipped Audio in Premiere Pro

 

Audio Gain in Premiere Pro

Changing the Volume of a clip in a sequence.

The line on the audio waveform shows you the clip volume.

 

 

I can drag the line up and down to change the volume, but its not a very exact way to work. Press the left and right bracket keys to lower/raise the volume 1 decibel.

Adding Shift will lower/raise the Audio 6 decibels. (this can be changed in Preferences > Audio)

 

If you want to manually keyframe the audio volume, Hold Command/Control and click on the line to add points.

Audio keyframes on a clip

 

Clip vs Track Audio

There are 2 types of Audio adjustments in Premiere Pro: clip level and track level.

Clip Level Adjustments – Dragging the clip audio line up and down,  the Audio Clip Mixer, the Essential Sound Panel.

Generally, you are working with audio on a clip level. To work on a track level, use the “Audio Track Mixer”.

If I move the fader for a track in the Audio Track Mixer”, I’m changing the volume for the whole track.

You will need to change the view to track from clip keyframes to track keyframes to see the audio changes you make in the track mixer.

 

Changing track volume

The track mixer is handy if you want to apply an audio effect(s) to all the clips on a track, and when you are doing a submix (grouping tracks like multiple SFX tracks so all the tracks are treated as one).

 

Applying audio effects to a track

 

 

 

Essential Sound Panel

The Essential Sound Panel was added in 2017, and offers a unified interface for working with audio.

Adobe has done a similar thing with graphics and color correction, adding the Essential Graphics and Lumetri Panels.

To get started, switch to the Audio workspace which automatically brings up the sound panel.

Then select the”Audio Type”  you want to adjust in the sequence.  Selecting the appropriate audio type

then allows you to pick from a variety presets or to manually make adjustments.

 

 

If you are new to audio, the presets are the best place to start. Experiment with them till you get a sense of how they work. Unchecking the boxes in the presets is a good way to hear what each setting does.

One of the features I use the most is the automatic ducking feature. This drops the music’s volume when you have narration, dialogue, SFX with the music clip. Select a music clip, pick the Music Preset, then one of the ducking presets. If I have multiple audio clips above the music (narration, dialogue, SFX), I start with the “duck against everything’ preset as it will react to all the audio clips.

The Noise Reduction Preset is essential when recording video/audio in an uncontrolled (not a studio) environment. Select a narration or dialogue clip, pick the Dialogue “Audio Type’. and select “clean yo noisy dialogue preset.

Loudness “Auto-Match” will set the “perceived loudness” of all the selected clips to be the same and is a quick way to make multiple clips sound even.

Using the essential Sound Panel will allow to quickly tweak your audio mixes, and production crate has a large selection of royalty-free music, SFX, and ambiances with new collections released often. If you have any questions, post them in the comments or in the forum.

 

Reduce Noise Preset

 

Easily learn all these steps in this video!

 

If you want to learn some advanced techniques using Apple’s Logic Pro X consider reading this article.

How to Make an 8-Bit Effect

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.

cartoon explosion assets

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.

learn to make an 8 bit explosion

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.

8BIT AFTER EFFECTS

 

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

Create Callouts for Free in After Effects (Script Download)

Creating callouts for your video can often be a complicated and time-consuming process, though all that is about to change…

We’ve created a free powerful script for Adobe After Effects that can do all the work for you in seconds: Crate’s Callouts!

Download the Free Callout Script here.

 

Callouts are the small infographic labels that overlay a video, highlighting an important feature to inform the viewer of a name, statistic or the anatomy of a seal:

Create Callouts for Free in After Effects (Script Download)

The script is packed with a huge bundle of presets, all fully customizable and ready for you to composite onto your video. This means that if you work for an organization or run a YouTube channel, you will be able to match the branding by adjusting the colours of the templates with one click!

To get started, you’ll need to first use a Null object to mark the position of what you want to be featured by the callout. The best part about this script is that it can be completely animated, so if you need the callout to follow a moving subject then this is the script for you.

Create Callouts for Free in After Effects (Script Download)

For the next step, we’ll need to install our script. Extract the files from the download, and drop the “productioncrate-callout-script.jsx” file into your After Effects > Scripts folder You then can run the script by heading through File -> Scripts -> Crate’s Callout Script.jsx.

Now let’s take a look at what features we have at our disposal:

Create Callouts for Free in After Effects (Script Download)

 

 

 

 

 

Arrows: Navigate through the presets to find the one you want.

 

Track Layer: Select the Null object you want the callout pointer to follow.

Title + Subtitle: Here’s where you input the text you want to be displayed.

Animation direction: Which way would you like the callout to come in from?

Color tools: Adjust the look of the preset to match your brand.

Smart Color Change: This nifty feature will automatically adjust any other colours that can be controlled to match your theme.

In/Out: What period (in seconds) do you want the callout to be on screen?

Base Point/Outline: Control the shape of the feature mark.

 

F: Click this to open up the text composition after creation, so you can adjust the font manually.

 

Once you’re happy with all the settings, hit “Create”, and you’ll save hours of time while the script creates your dream callout card within seconds!

Each preset has been carefully designed animated to give it the most professional appearance possible, helping you increase your production value at no extra cost!

If you want to control and customise the callout card after it has been generated, that is no problem! There will be a control null generated in your main composition window, clicking on this will reveal all of the various colour settings that you can adjust instantly in the effects window.

We’re excited to see how you make use of these free After Effects callout presets. If you’re interested in how else you can boost your workflow, take a look at our Lower Thirds script.

Create Callouts for Free in After Effects (Script Download)

 

 

Crush a Car with VFX!

We’re taking you on a quick journey to explore how we created this awesome car-crush VFX shot!

We’ll cover plenty of techniques in this mini-tutorial that will help you build your very own VFX shot from start to finish.

We used 3ds Max and After Effects for this, however, we’ve ensured that you will be able to follow along and use the same workflow in almost any other 3D software like Blender.

This is our first Davesplanation episode, so let us know if you want to see more!

Let’s get started:

You can download the car model here if you are a Pro User

For Pro’s we have another car model you can download here

Find the Crate’s Camera Shaker Script Here

The Sound Effects  used are all available on SoundsCrate

Kick down a door with VFX!

Whether you’re making a dramatic entrance, or you just don’t like doors, kicking down doors with VFX can be an awesome addition to your movie.

We featured a shot in our Captain Marvel VFX tutorial that included just this, and now we’re showing you how we did it!

You can apply these steps to almost any software, so whether you have Blender, 3Ds Max, Maya or Cinema4D, you’ll be able to follow along. Likewise, most compositing software (After Effects, Premiere Pro) will be powerful enough for you to use these techniques.

Watch our quick tutorial on how you can create your own door-kick VFX!

Want to learn even more compositing tricks? Check out our UFO invasion tutorial!