Put Together a Realistic District 9 Composite

on Sep 4th 2009 with 144 comments
Tutorial Details
  • Program: After Effects, Knoll Light Factory (Optional)
  • Difficulty: Intermediate

Final Product What You'll Be Creating

Adding outside elements into a scene can be a tedious endeavor. Today we’ll be shown a few different compositing tips as we superimpose the space ship from District 9 into our shot.

Requirements

  • Knoll Light Factory (Optional) You can download a trial version here.

Tutorial

Download Tutorial .flv

File size 402MB

 
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I'm a graphic design student from Dublin, Ireland. I hope you guys will some something form my tutorial. If I'm not on here you can find me over at Keyframe Kid or follow me @YoussefSarhan  

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  • myu

    awwww its the best …..

  • grayday

    Yep…a link to that ship would be great….very hard to find at the moment!

  • grayday

    Okay…now I feel a bit stupid. Just looked at the ship in the tutorial again and I can see that he’s photoshopped it a fair bit. He’s rounded off the top, etc. So anyone can use the existing pics (of which there are a lot of high res ones) that are on Google.

  • NicoB

    Billy (not to clever professor) I lecture and crit but believe you should always back up your agrs with some of your own examples.

    PS: maybe a change of team on the football scene?? – you may feel more positive

    • Billy

      Look at how many people have criticized this tutorial….for you to single me out is moronic.

      …And I love Arsenal…I feel very positive about them. Attempting to criticize my football team is pathetic. Douche.

      • Jack

        Billy
        I would read your argument if you would put it in a video. Hate reading. Especially basic arguments written by a beginner like you who is just boring to the rest of us. Take a class in logic and get back to us.

      • http://www.vimeo.com/everettoptions Adam Everett Miller

        Billy, can I get your email address?

  • sneak

    good tutorial – - – dont know why ppl are complaining – im a beginner so therefore i learnt and benefited from this tut… thanks

  • myu from srilanka

    guys better take the pic of the ship from the wallpaper of district 9 and crop the space ship image in photoshop.. thats the best idea how i did and, its works pretty gud. if not if u r a 3D animator better model a ship and composite to AE….

  • http://www.mechanicalwhispers.com Robert Morris

    Wow… this was a really long tutorial about basic techniques done poorly. Clouds should not be tracked if there are better SOLID contrast points (which there were) and the rotation should be tracked with handheld camera footage, as it usually rotates (which it does here). Hence why the track looks like it’s slipping. Creating atmosphere on a solid ship is not done by drawing a feathered alpha mask. Additionally, the color correction between plates was barely addressed and didn’t even match when the author moved on. Not good for even beginners trying to learn the techniques. Then I got bored watching about 10 minutes of pointless lens flare expressions.

    Sorry, I just hate when people are teaching bad form, and others are learning the wrong way to do things. Granted, there are many ways to do things in AE. But if you’re wanting to learn compositing skills, these techniques shown here are not even close.

    That being said, I agree that the audio was clear. Nice change from many other tutorials having poor audio quality.

  • Metallikat79

    Good stuff, I’m quite new to after effects.
    One question though, after pickwhipping the light source to the postion of the null, I added the code like you said:

    thisComp.layer(“Track Null”).transform.position-65

    but what if i want to move it along the y axis as well? I can’t suss it out. SOMEBODY HELP PLEASE!!!!

    • http://www.chaosraven.com frayquantum

      you can use temp/value index

      in after effects, multiple values of every properties are represented by their index. therefore:

      transform.position = all general values

      transform.position[0] = first value
      transform.position[1] = second value

      if you want to target specific values for instance, leaving x and subtracting 65 from y,
      do it as such :

      x=thisComp.layer(”Track Null”).transform.position[0];
      y=thisComp.layer(”Track Null”).transform.position[1];
      [x,y-65]

      where x will be filled by x values, and y filled by y values
      then further operations on the separate values are possible by adding operator on them.(on the example above, y have been reduced by 65 points)

      when they have 3 values, such as 3D layers, the index will be [0], [1], and [2].

      hope that helps.

      • Metallikat79

        that all seems to make sense, however, it disables the expression because of a syntax error???!!!

        basically i pasted in the text as you said:
        x=thisComp.layer(”Track Null”).transform.position[0];
        y=thisComp.layer(”Track Null”).transform.position[1];
        [x,y-65]

        is there anything missing from this that should also be there????

      • http://www.chaosraven.com frayquantum

        hmm, it works on my cs4.
        Oh I know, replace the ” on both lines.
        web formatted type comes with a curved ”
        in AE, you must type the new ” which is straight.
        silly I know.

        x = thisComp.layer(“Track Null”).transform.position[0];
        y = thisComp.layer(“Track Null”).transform.position[1];
        [x, y-65]

        “Track Null” is the name of the item you’re tracking (change it if u used sth else).

        and thisComp refers that the null is in the same comp

      • http://www.chaosraven.com frayquantum

        oh btw, when you copy/paste code for whatever reason, make sure that they are “code formatted” meaning everything is in unencoded text form.

        this board does not have that capability yet so it will be confusing when you paste something and it doesn’t work. in this case though it’s simply the slanted/curved ” quotation marks. who knows what else.

  • myu from srilanka

    i like the film look… but camera tracking is really poor

  • myu from srilanka

    hey guys i’ve cropped the mother ship image in PNG and PSD format..
    here is the download link.

    go to http://www.slingfile.com

    username=moreimage
    password=player

    then go to >> myfiles

    http://www.slingfile.com/members/myfiles=1
    download ufo.png or ufo.psd

  • 14k

    Words to the complainers and big talkers, this is a FREE tutorial.

    Exit is that way, take it or leave it.

  • Robbie Stewart

    DISTRICT 9 SUCKED!

    that is all…

  • se7en89

    hey everybody,,,, anybody help me file music in tut here? plz

  • Digital Domain

    Okay, back to the topic. I like the idea of compositing the aircraft with the scene and adding the appropriate lighting for more realism, really beautiful if I may say. Except as I was watching the preview, I couldn’t help to notice that the aircraft was moving ahead, maybe two frames faster than the camera, resulting in poor match-moving. In my opinion, I would have used high-end tracking systems such as Boujou, PFTrack, or even the new tracking system added into AE CS4 (Mocha). Other then that, I enjoyed the tutorial! Thank you for adding this to the list as we need more compositing tutorials. :)

  • Simon

    Billy’s comments are very useful i find, I dont always agree with em,
    but someone said something about ‘Raising the bar’ and i think Billy is that motivation for members/people to try and do just that.

  • Simon

    PS: All tuts are awesome

  • Victor

    Very interesting, I’d say… it certainly becomes tough to insert elements in outdoor settings, and this one here is a neat example of doing it right…combined with the right music, it can truly become the next big thing…

  • funk

    The tut is available only in low res??

  • http://www.iretiredat25.com Leo

    Great tutorial, great tips.

    Here’s my output (I ripped some of your audio, I hope you don’t mind, ha)

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wm1QP0LIURw&hd=1

  • Hary

    I don’t know about the AE tuts?
    I think nothing can compare to Video Copilot.
    net tuts are great ,I don’t like when people are after money and they try to take over everything they can.You should do the one thing you are great in. Video Copilot is the best for AE tutorials.Net Tuts is one of the best for web but this kind of building an empire makes me see it from another prospective.
    If Jeffry starts he’s own project ,I will never visit net tuts.

  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuKYzJq0MgM Miguel

    Hi, i’m a beginner, this is my D-9 i would like to use after effects and i try to do something like your.i like your tut.. OK ! I know ! I have a long way to do…HAHAHA !
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuKYzJq0MgM

  • Xemon

    Hi, great tutorial!

    I wonder where i can download your last sound the man who “sing”, “scream” THX.

    and maybe a couple files like that.

  • trey

    Sorry, but I don’t see the picture mother ship in http://www.slingfile.com/members/myfiles=1 …. where is it???

    • myu from srilanka

      oww i’m sorry i don’t knw how but the files r getting deleted.. i had more images now all r lost

  • Alberto

    please Mother ship png

  • http://avapglobal.com/Vikash/index.html Vikash Verma

    Nice. U have a great future.

  • Mike

    can someone put up the picture?

  • John Rambo

    i’m just learning after effects. it would really help if tutorials were accompanied by project files. project files anyone, author??

  • LucaOZ

    Hi !

    He just took the spaceship of the poster (here for example : http://www.nuffnang.com.my/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/poster.jpg )
    And cut it out, I tried myself and I get that : http://i14.servimg.com/u/f14/11/74/29/55/spaces10.png

    See ya’

  • http://moviemaker.co.nr moviemaker

    This tutorial is completely useless if you don’t show how to color correct the space station. You basically just dragged in the image and it looked OK. You didn’t teach us anything at all.

  • Radeon

    402mb for a crappy quality video, no better than mobile phone size quality!!

  • medwed
  • Talamanca

    Thank you very much for your tutorial an effort, it helps a lot a many of us to learn more.

  • http://www.asdf.com asdf

    terrible. terrible. terrible.

    you’re doing the VFX artists of D9 a disservice by mocking their work with this “tutorial”.

    learn how to do it right, then start making tutorials.

    no-one wants to learn from a n00b, learn you’re place.

  • Newbie

    THANKS!
    It’s a great tutorials!

  • http://gong.bg Brigette Brutlag

    thank you!

  • manju

    Thxx for tutorial

    and thxx medwed for image and music
    :)

  • Michael Gibbins

    Hey man thanks for the tutorial but I have a huge problem. When I position the null object and click analyse forward or whatever, the null object moves everywhere. Can you help me please!!!!!!!!!!!

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  • http://praveenvisual.blogspot.com Vfxpraveen

    i hate this tutorial

  • Hasan Halai

    Just some advice;
    The track was not great, you could see the ship sort of wiggling at some point which threw me off. I’d suggest that with a shot like this, use mocha to track, you’ll get much better results :)

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