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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.
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By Marc R Leonard
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vry cool
nice, finally some good stuff
Your avatar freaks me out man. Get a new one. No one thinks, “oh how cool a pre-me baby avatar!”
shut up douche
That’s my face man… anyway is Douche your real name? That’s hilarious
final effect looks kinda cool.. thanks for the tutorial
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
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.
yesss good stuff , u r good man for posting tuts
Very good!
Finally we have sequence of good tutorials!
nice
Quality – Rock on!
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.
Hey thanks for watching! Man I miss VT! I hope all is well there, I love the Brattleboro co-op!
w00t! Shout out to my man, Marc!
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.
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.
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.
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!
Excellent Marc!
Theres many ways to do anything in after effects – refreshing to see outside the box from other people’s examples.
Thanks!
Thanks for watching!
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.
Absolutely. Thanks for the input, I’ll certainly watch for that next time.
Wow … very interesting .. Never thought about doing something like this in AE.
Thanks …
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.
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.
Thank Marc R Leonard and AEtuts.com Video tutorial good…
good input
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.
Yeah absolutely, good observation!
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.
You should have tracked the skyes
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.
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.
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.
hope to find some spot light on the ground
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
If youre light is white, set it to Classic Color Dodge 
Thanks for the light wrap trick… I was looking to learn a way to do it AE.
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.
Sweet this tut came right in time!
wow…that awesome!
got to try!!
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.
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.
man hats off
have gone so far….. who am i kidding…….i can really get into animations now`
Is it possible to add dust effect?
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.