Shine Some Light On The Situation

on Nov 11th 2009 with 49 comments
Download Source Files

Final Product What You'll Be Creating

When working on VFX, you can often measure your success by how invisible you are. If the audience doesn’t know there was an effect created, then you did a good job. In this tutorial I will show you all how to make turn a plain dolly shot into a dynamic room with light rays and a sky replacement.

Tutorial

Download Tutorial .flv

File size 157MB

 
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By

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Originally from Southern Vermont, Marc is now going to school in Pennsylvania where is also a freelance Editor and Visual Effects Artist. He just finished working on the feature: A Lonely Place for Dying. Check out his blog here or follow him.  

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  • http://www.myspace.com/myonionz morstua

    vry cool

  • Daniel

    nice, finally some good stuff

    • Douche

      Your avatar freaks me out man. Get a new one. No one thinks, “oh how cool a pre-me baby avatar!”

      • Tray

        shut up douche

      • Daniel

        That’s my face man… anyway is Douche your real name? That’s hilarious

  • http://www.behance.net/Modisana Modisana

    final effect looks kinda cool.. thanks for the tutorial

  • http://www.noisejunkies.net Rafael Guerra

    The outcome is really interesting, but it would look even cooler if the footage used had a better camera movement, in my opinion. Still cool, you managed to change the whole mood of scene with simple steps :)

  • Sal

    Thx, man. Great tut.

    Yeah, please post more tuts. these are exactly the tuts I’d like to see.

    BTW, you got a great quick teaching style.

  • tot pal

    yesss good stuff , u r good man for posting tuts

  • http://www.youtube.com.br/ianhpiratao IANH – BR

    Very good!
    Finally we have sequence of good tutorials!

  • Creative Media Films

    nice

  • jim hines

    Quality – Rock on!

  • Brett Perry

    A good tutorial. I’ve seen the technique for creating the matte used in several different ways. Your bio said you were from southern VT. I’m a motion graphics and visual effects freelancer based here in Brattleboro, VT.
    Another Green Mountain Boy taking the industry by storm (ha). Good Luck.

    • http://marcrleonard.blogspot.com Marc R Leonard
      Author

      Hey thanks for watching! Man I miss VT! I hope all is well there, I love the Brattleboro co-op!

  • http://danielbroadway.blogspot.com Daniel Broadway

    w00t! Shout out to my man, Marc!

  • eric

    Great trick w the Colorama for making luma. The small things that can save you hours of work. Thanks a lot. Sharing is caring….

    Nice pace in the tutorial btw, its hard to get it just right.

  • http://www.mattburnell.com MbCM

    Clean and clearly done. Nice work. You have an excellent way of presenting the materials. Plan to use this in something soon. Looking forward to more.

  • Matthew Grunau

    Great work. I like the the way you approached this a little different than most would have. I also thought the brief explanations you gave for the different effects and such will help people who don’t exactly know, for instance, how the Colorama filter works.

    I also really liked your light wrap. I’de not seen it done quite that way, and the results were great.

    Lastly, if you stabilized the footage why didn’t you do a simple motion track for your masks? That would have been fastest and most accurate.

    • http://marcrleonard.blogspot.com Marc R Leonard
      Author

      That’s a great question, I guess it comes down to a couple things.
      First of all, you cannot apply tracking data to a mask. I would have to use a separate Alpha Track Matte layer that the Adjustment layer could read off of. In my opinion, if I were to do that, it would just be too much work to be worth it.
      The masks I made were very simple and didn’t take much time at all.
      In reality, I don’t even think I needed to Mask off the windows for the adjustment layer because Bevel Alpha would have read off the bars anyways, I did it just for safety. :)
      Thanks for the comments and questions!

  • paul

    Excellent Marc!

    Theres many ways to do anything in after effects – refreshing to see outside the box from other people’s examples.

    • http://marcrleonard.blogspot.com Marc R Leonard
      Author

      Thanks!
      Thanks for watching!

  • Jack Daniel

    Very cool tutorial, and I agree with most of what people are saying how you explain what the effects are doing, especially with Colorama.. it’s not a plugin I see used much because few know what it really does or how to work with it. Well done. One thing I might suggest is that maybe you edit your final presentation and cut out when you pause your video and watch your “um”‘s. Also, keep a glass of water handy when recording. ;)
    Still, very, very cool tutorial. I look forward to seeing what you have planned for your next one. Thanks for sharing.

    • http://marcrleonard.blogspot.com Marc R Leonard
      Author

      Absolutely. Thanks for the input, I’ll certainly watch for that next time. ;)

  • http://www.rafaelbraga.com Rafael Braga

    Wow … very interesting .. Never thought about doing something like this in AE.

    Thanks …

  • http://www.henrymatt.com Matt Henry

    Very nice tutorial! I liked how you kept the pace quick and didn’t show us boring stuff that everyone knows. I look forward to your future tutorials.

    PS, is the lower resolution of the cloud layer noticeable when played at full resolution? I get nervous when I scale up footage like that, but I wonder how much it actually matters. I assume AE has a decent resampling engine built in.

    • http://marcrleonard.blogspot.com Marc R Leonard
      Author

      Another great question.
      This is why it works (and why in a different situation it may not work):
      First off, the footage that I was using is very smooth, it isn’t super contrasty, and it isn’t super sharp. Also, there is ample movement in the shots. So when you scale it up, the lack of contrast allows it to scale without you eye catching alot of tearing edges and such.
      Now, more specifically, the major reason why it works is from the processing done to it. After inserting it I’ve: applied Curves, and applied Shine. These filters (I hate to say this) “cover up” the up res.
      Every situation is going to be different, when I did this shot and scaled up the footage I watched in full 2k res and didn’t see a problem.
      Another tip, when scaling something up, if you can afford to, throw a blur on it. It doesn’t need to be alot, but it will blend yous pixels a bit better.

  • luantran

    Thank Marc R Leonard and AEtuts.com Video tutorial good…

  • http://www.sevenderd.com sevenderd

    good input

  • tommie12P

    Great tutorial. I like your way of explaining the things (techniques) before you actually do it (much better than just saying “add new layer” and stuff)

    One thing I noticed though is that your adj layer which “warms up” the floor actually warms up the pillar as well. You could just have copied the mask you did before and subtract the pillar.

    • http://marcrleonard.blogspot.com Marc R Leonard
      Author

      Yeah absolutely, good observation!

  • Nishad

    I’m glad you put this tutorial up, I was actually wondering how this effect was produced earlier this week. Really random that this is up now.

  • Dot

    You should have tracked the skyes

    • http://danielbroadway.blogspot.com Daniel Broadway

      Actually, no, at that distance, the sky would have a seemingly infinite parallax. If he had tilted or panned, yes, but not with a straight dolly.

  • Luis Santiago

    HEY I NOTICE THAT IN THE ORIGINAL RESULT, THE WINDOW TUBES ACTUALLY MAKE SOME SHADOW BUT I DIDNT SEE HOW YOU DID IN THE TUTORIAL.

    • http://marcrleonard.blogspot.com Marc R Leonard
      Author

      Greetings,
      I assume you are talking about where the light isn’t shing through because of the bars?
      Easy solve.
      You just need to position the coordinate where shine is “coming from” so that it lines up. It’s all about just messing around with that, you don’t need any other type of process.

  • madjid

    hope to find some spot light on the ground

  • http://www.soundfx.mlap.com armageddon

    a quick tip maybe useful: if you wanna make a light reflection, make a solid with the color of the light, and set Blending Mode to Color Dodge. Its cool :D If youre light is white, set it to Classic Color Dodge :)

  • Leandro-Los Angeles

    Thanks for the light wrap trick… I was looking to learn a way to do it AE.

  • baran

    gr8 job man!! even though am a novice artist.. its really a cool thing from you .i too expecting further cool tutors in the future.

  • http://cargocollective.com/FredrikDavidsson Fredrik Davidsson

    Sweet this tut came right in time!

  • Dz

    wow…that awesome!
    got to try!!

  • http://www.twitter.com/foochuck Charley

    I’ve come across a lot of great after effects tutorials on this site. A lot of great knowledge and it’s always appreciated.

    My one concern is that almost every tutorial uses 3rd party plug-ins…I would recommend always trying to show people a way to do it with the built in plug-ins of After Effects.

  • Mikester

    Good tut but man learn to edit before you submit. I’m sorry but I don’t want to listen to you cough or clear your throat and there is no need to tell people you are pausing to do something. I suggest you check out Andrew Kramer, Eran Stern, or the guys at Creative Cow for how to “produce” your tutorials.

  • sheel saket

    man hats off
    have gone so far….. who am i kidding…….i can really get into animations now`

  • Anton

    Is it possible to add dust effect?

  • Joana

    This tutorial is well done and just my speed. I’m new to Ae, but not to other Adobe software. I found your pace was spot on–not over-explaining. And a good example of realistic work-flow. Definitely able to follow along–covering a great deal of the interface, helpful tips, esp. work on the halos and hot-keys.

    I noticed the “um’s” too, but that’s only because I do the same. I’m looking forward to more tuts, Marc. The discussions following added to the topic and my understanding. Thanks all.

  • http://razorbladeromance.blogg.no Rene Sveen

    Hey Marco! Thanks for this awesome tutorial, but is it any names of the preset? of the room you are using? Hope for answer, doing a project for my ex:)!

  • Dan

    A lot of people have commented that they don’t like it when you pause the recording while you do something tedious. I actually really appreciate that. simply keyframing the masks or other simple yet time consuming tasks is a great time to say “so, i’m going to go thru and do this and I’ll be back”. I don’t need to watch you set every keyframe. I say well done sir!

  • mog

    hello,

    the projects files are down. Can you reupload it ?

    Thanks