VFX Tip: Compositing Fog or Mist

on Feb 19th 2009 with 17 comments

Compositing fog elements seems like a pretty straightforward thing to do in After Effects. Shoot or render your fog element against black, and then Add or Screen it on top of your footage, right? Wrong. This method is incorrect. Daniel Broadway goes over why.


 
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Daniel Broadway is a professional graphic designer working at an NBC affiliate as Graphics Director. He is also a freelance visual effects artist and compositor, having worked as visual effects supervisor on two independent feature films "20 Years After.", and most recently "A Lonely Place for Dying."  

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  • http://graphicriver.net/user/kiziel kiziel

    nice

  • LGFN

    So I see that you’re starting to link to other websites. Well, very good, as long as it’s not refraining you of posting your own wonderful tutorials right here, of course…

    Keep up your amazing tutorials! We’re anticipating each and everyone of them, and embracing it upon it’s arrival!!!

  • Rizzo

    This has to be one of the most pointless tutorials i’ve ever seen for AE…not just here but anywhere.

  • http://www.instantshift.com DKumar M.

    awesome technique… Thanks for sharing.

  • Brian

    Not my favorite tutorial, and certainly not a fan of having to visit other sites to view them. Sorry to be rude, but I check your site 4x a day for new tuts :-)

  • http://aescripts.com Lloyd Alvarez

    @Brian – This is not a AETUTS tutorial, hence the “From the Web” category and why you need to visit another site to view it. Having said that, it erroneously got listed in the main tutorial feed when it should not have. We are working to fix that problem.

  • Neandros

    I also did not care for this TUT, you can do better. I would rather you not post anything at all than posting this kind of material.

    And to they guy who check 4X a day… it’s call an RSS feed.

  • http://aescripts.com Lloyd Alvarez

    You guys should not be so quick to dismiss these kinds of tutorials. Just because it doesn’t have a whizz bang final effect doesn’t mean it’s not valuable. The kind of detail you learn in this tutorial is the reason special effects in movies are as good as they are. I personally had never realized the nuances of compositing fog and had erroneously used screen or add in the past and was very happy to have learned a better way to do it.

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

    I’m sorry a couple of you didn’t find the tutorial helpful. I wrote it as a quick tip for visual effects compositors. If you did not find it useful, do you really need to bash it and tell the site admins not to post it at all? That seems a little harsh to me.

  • Kyle

    Thanks for the great tip on how do better composting. For those that are bashing it, are you forgetting that they’re giving you all this for free? What a bunch of whiners.

  • Jim Musana

    Many thanks Daniel Broadway for sharing this resouceful info.I really feel bad when folks make such negative comments without thinking first.This is a website which means it is viewed all over the world by artists and compositors of all levels even those just hoping to get into this trade.

    I live and work in Africa where such information is Gold.I have learnt so much from this website in so short a time that i promise one day i will return the favour.

    This is to all the negative folks out there,instead of complaining,just create a website and post tutorials that you feel are useful otherwise dont infect our already healthy community with your disease.

    Ask yourself,what have you done for the world in your lifetime?

    Keep up the good work AETUTS and the ENVATO network!

    • Visual Crow

      yeah, why dont you pay up ?

  • http://www.ricardorobles.com Ricardo Robles

    just saw all your posts in your blog… your tips are simple but useful! nice work man! (although I think this one is very very similar to the one that is in the mark christiansen’s book)

  • Mark Bowen

    Excellent tip. Have already been doing this for a while now but nice to see it written up in such a great and meaningful way.

    Also to anyone knocking the tip it is FREE after all!!! Don’t knock something which took someone time to write up and which is given away for free.

    Best wishes,

    Mark

  • http://idt.karalekian.com/ iDevelopThings

    Looks nice.. thanks!

  • elhora

    i really love that kind of quick usefull tips. That helps people who, like me, are learning the secrets of compositing.

  • Nathan

    This was a really nice quick tip! Easy to understand and very useful.