Production - After Effects Assets

My secondary role was producing additional visual effects, I mainly used the programs Adobe After Effects CS3 and Photoshop to accomplish all this. As science fiction was involved in the plot, I did research on certain elements that were relevant to the genre and began using a collection of techniques and methods to develop some desired effects, such as using wireframe grids and holographic transitions to create a virtual reality simulation from one live action movie clip to another. 

FIRE TESTS

Below are a few screen shot images of simulating fire as a possible effect for the film. Unfortunately this effect was never used in the final movie but it is here for you to see. Once again, used After Effects to accomplish this effect and the fire animation preset is of my own design. Had to look at several images of fire for reference so I could achieve as close as possible the look of realistic fire.

I achieved this by using a combination of a particle system, several glow effects and some color key and vector blur nodes to make it look like fire. I've actually added a tutorial on how to produce this animation preset in a later post, originally I was going to put on as a PDF file but since I did not have the patience, I've put it on this blog in a separate post instead, be sure to look out for it.

Same fire effect but with some smoke added. Once again used the Particle System with same blur effects in a separate solid object and then placed it behind the fire clip.

Screenshot of a blazing fire outside the elevator door. Only this image remains as this shot was never completed.

Final version of the fire/smoke test, sadly it was never used in the final movie but might be used for future productions.

S.P.E.C.S TEST

I used camera tracking for this particular shot to add a separate effects composition to the sunglasses.

Image of me tracking certain points of the glasses to be used to add the clip shown in the previous image. Set the modes to Position, Rotation and Scale to get a more accurate tracking so that the clip would blend in more.

Final version of the s.p.e.c.s test with sound FX mixed with original audio.

"DIGITIZATION" TESTING - LEVELS 0 & 4

One major effect that was used was what I like to call "digitization." The sunglasses had to make the character go from a green screen studio room to an elevator but we had to make it look good and one transition that I developed was what is known as "digitization." Basically a wireframe grid of the elevator would appear and then the green screen would transition into that of the actual elevator and then the wireframe grid dissipates away.  

The way I went about doing that was to create the actual grid by using several 3D layers with grid effect presets assigned to them, once again using the actual film footage for reference, using a few glow effects to make it more interesting. Then to blend the grid more, I had to make it move with the footage, to do that I used a camera tracking technique. 

Assigned a motion tracker to a particular point of the footage that would easy for the tracker to follow and then analyzed (played the footage) so that the tracker would focus on that point and set key frames for each frame of a second. 

Then I added a null object and edited it as a target so that the motion key frames would be transferred to that object. Then I parent the grid object to the null object and when that was done, the wireframe grid moved with the footage so it looked as though it was actually being filmed.

Here is a video test of the first digitzation stage, beginning with level 0 (the floor of the building). Added some more elements to make it look a bit more interesting and added some rough sound effects to accompany it.

A screenshot of the second grid being developed in Photoshop as it was proved too difficult to develop directly in After Effects. Used a combination of shapes in varying sizes as well as a frame clip taken from After Effects. Meant that I saved a shot of a grid as a Photoshop layer from AE and then imported it into Photoshop and used several duplicates to make up the image as shown above.

A screenshot of me editing a null object to follow a certain point of the footage.  Sometimes footage is hard to track due to lighting and without something unique for the tracker to focus on, so for this one I had to set keyframes manually focusing on the edge of the elevator door. 

Imported the Photoshop file of the grid into AE and did some modifications such as glow effects and beam.

Producing transition of one movie clip to another with the grid in effect.

The final version of the second digitization test, with audio.

OTHER TESTS

Below are some more visual effects that never made it into the final version of the movie. While some robots have to fire ammunition at the character, I attempted to create a sort of raygun effect based on some reference from other sci fi movies. Achieved this using a radio waves node, simply altered the controls and frequency so that they would move from the center of the screen to the left side and then added a glow effect as well as a beam of light for extra effect.

First ray gun test using radio waves with glow and light effects a beam of light and lens flare to accompany it.

Same effect, but with a blue flame preset added, based on the other animation preset I mentioned earlier, only with the colour changed.

This here is a rendered rough test of a robot attacking our main character, with both effects added. Had to added some lighting effects to enhance the scene.