Compositing 3D Animation in After Effects From Blender 3D: VFX Tutorial

in this video we're going to go over compositing  this shot inside of after effects if you check   the description you'll find a link where you can  download the 3D render as well as the background   footage so you could follow along let's get to it  so I'm going to start by dragging our footage into   a new comp and I'm just going to change this to 8  bit while we work for now just so that everything   moves quicker so here we have our footage pre-med  and you'll notice at the end of the timeline I   have a marker and that's because I'm referencing  that frame when I built this in blender that's   the frame that we want to match everything onto  including the tracking and everything so I'll take   our render here of the metroids and you can see  it's not really tracked onto the shot so the first   thing we want to do is actually track our footage  so let's create a null object which is going to   hold the tracking data so we'll just rename it  tracking data and we're going to track our footage   so we'll double click uh right click track motion  and it's kind of hard hard to see cuz it's very   small cuz we're in 4k but let's just move this  down and we'll put this here that seems like a   high contrast area and then uh we can do rotation  and scale and we'll move this over to this side so   I'll put it right there I think that's a good  spot and I'll just make this slightly bigger   and same thing for this this is the starch area  so it's going to search whatever is in here and   if the camera moves too much and it's outside of  this outer box then it's going to lose the track   so make sure that that's big enough to cover  the camera movement and we'll just uh track   backwards here so happens pretty quick one note  about motion tracking camera movement if you're   just doing a pan or tilt shot then you don't need  a 3D camera track you can actually just get away   with the standard motion tracker in After Effects  so that's just one thing to keep note of so that   when you're on set maybe you can make it a little  easier on yourself and just do a pan or tilt shot   rather than a handheld walking shot keep it simple  and it'll be simpler in post so we have this track   and it looks pretty good so I'm just going to  edit the target here make sure it's on tracking   data hit okay we don't have it applied yet we have  to apply it so we'll hit apply uh X and Y yes okay   and now we have our tracking data attached to  the null object so again we worked off of this   last frame remember that marker is there so we  want to go to that last frame and then parent   the Metroid swarm footage to the tracking data on  that last frame so there we go that's looking good   and you'll notice here that if we go back to the  beginning we have a gap in the footage because the   footage isn't big enough so that's one thing that  you want to keep in mind is that maybe design it   a little bit larger so instead of like 1920 x 1080  or 30 840 by 2160 you might just keep that aspect   ratio but just design it a little bit bigger so  that you don't have to do what I'm about to do   here but that's fine we can deal with this um what  we can do here is actually take let me change the   color of this layer so we can actually see what  we're doing here so purple and I'll press y on   the keyboard and we'll activate the Pan behind  tool we'll take the Anchor Point of the Metroid   swarm footage and we'll just move it down to the  edge of this building cuz that's where where we   want the metroids to disappear behind so we'll  keep it there and then when we scale this up so   that the Border gets bigger we're scaling from  this point so we don't lose the point in which   the metroids go behind the building so right there  is pretty good now you have to be careful because   the left side if you can see here the left side  is still cut off so you have to be careful that   if any metroids come in like right there you can  see that that's cut off guess we could probably   just scale it up even more or we can move it over  to the right uh the only thing is that we lose the   metroids going on the the edge of the building but  that's up to you I'll leave that up to you guys   I'm actually going to scale it up even more so we  should be good around there and remember it's only   for a couple of frames too so yeah yeah so we're  good there yeah that's perfect so we don't have   any metroids getting clipped or cut off on the  edge there but that's kind of cool because you   can change the position of where the metroids  are but still have it tracked to the camera so   the next thing we have to do is put the metroids  behind the building we're going to come back and   deal with the sharpness of the metroids later it  is a bit sharp and CG looking so we're going to   help that blend a little bit better we're going  to Roto the building first so let's uh duplicate   the building footage and we'll drop this on top  of the metroids and we'll just lower the opacity   a little bit so we can kind of see what's going on  and we'll name this Roto building another thing I   want to do is create a solid and we're going to  use this solid as the Roto mat so we're going to   Roto on the solid and then use that as a alpha mat  or this Roto building layer the benefit of this is   that we can actually link this solid to the track  so that we can minimize the amount of key framing   that we have to do to the mask so you'll see in a  second what I mean but we'll just name this Roto   mat and a trick that we want to do is we want  to make sure that it's bigger than the comp so   right now it's 8,000 by 4500 and that keeps our  169 aspect ratio so I want to make this bigger   because when it's attached to the track make sure  again we're on this marker here and uh so we'll   attach this to the tracking data if this solid was  too small then it would move out of frame there   so let's say for instance it was the size of the  comp now with the tracking you can see that it's   not big enough so you want to make sure that you  make the solid big enough so that it doesn't click   clip on the edges there okay so I'm going to turn  the Roto building opacity up all the way and I'm   going to turn the opacity down or another thing  I could do actually is just shut it off so just   shut it off so we can see the footage underneath  it and we can Roto around the building now make   sure the Roto mat solid is selected and we'll  create a mask and we'll come in here and start rooing so one thing to keep in mind here is  that you probably don't need to go all crazy   over here because this is not where the metroids  are going behind the building so I'm just going   to include this part and we should be good we  don't need to do any other detailed Roto here   none of the metroids pass this section here so  you don't need to do any detailed Roto here the   more detailed Roto you have to do is over here  where they are going behind the building I know   since this is my film and I'm the director that I  want the metroids right here so I'm not not going   to move it so there's no point in Roto that part  of the building I'm just going to go to the end   here and I'm going to take a look at the mask and  see if it falls off at all here let's follow this   along now I can already see that it's falling off  so let's just create a key frame at the end and a   good way to do this is not to go to the end and  then move one frame and then Roto and then move   another frame and Roto we want to work with the  interpolation that's built into After Effects   the best way to do that is actually to create a  key here fix the mask and then go in the middle   of the two and then create another key and then  fix the mask there I'm just going to fix this   here so we're falling off a bit over here and  let's just um just select these two points and   now we can use the number pad to kind of move  that in so that's [Music] good now that we've   done this for the first frame and then the last  frame what we want to do is go in the middle of   the two so roughly in the middle somewhere around  here and see if the mask is has fallen off at all   here and I'm seeing it's barely falling off so  that's a good thing we have less cleanup to do   here so I think we are pretty good move that over  and then now we want to go in the middle of these   two key frames and make sure the mask didn't fall  off so [Music] pretty good but I think we can do a   little bit better here all right so then you want  to go in the middle of these two key frames that   looks good so we don't have to worry about it go  in the middle of these two key frames that looks   good so now we want to go in the middle of these  two key frames and so this is the most efficient   way to Roto cuz you're interpolating between these  two and what's going to happen is that when you   fix and create a key frame over here where the  playhead is then it's going to interpolate now   between this new section so let's go ahead and  do that so select that and then we want to go in   between these two and that looks good so we don't  need to add any more key frames so we have a total   of what four or five five key frames for our Roto  job and that didn't really take all that long so   that's good you can see how much the tracking  data actually helped us here kind of did most   of the work for us so now I'm just going to turn  this back on make sure the opacity is up all the   way and then we can use this solid as a mat so  we'll do we'll take this click this button to   show the track mat and then we'll just select our  Roto mat and we can see here that the metroids are   going behind the building and that's looking  good we do want to feather The Edge a little   bit so we'll go back to the Roto mat bring up our  mask by hitting mm on the keyboard so M twice and   we'll do 1.5 pixels this might be too much what  I'm seeing is that we're getting a little bit of   the Blue from the sky so we're going to erode  The Mask a little bit so instead of expanding   it we're going to shrink it down so we'll do -1  and that should get rid of that that's looking   pretty good so I'm happy with that hey guys sorry  to interrupt this video I just want to remind you   to like And subscribe so you don't miss out on  future videos including future film making and   visual effects tutorials all right let's jump back  into it looking good now one thing I want to do is   fix the look of the metroids they're a bit sharp  if you compare them to the rest of the footage as   you can see here so what I'm going to do is I'll  zoom in a little bit and we'll add a blur so we'll   go to blur camera lens blur and the default is  way too high and I think even one is too high   so we might even just have to go all the way down  to like 0.1 and we'll turn this on and off to see   what that does it's slight softening maybe we'll  do 0 2 I think that's a little bit better but you   know what we can do we're going to add more motion  blur to this so we'll do 0.1 or actually let's   split the difference 0.15 that's looking good now  one thing I didn't do when I rendered the metroids   as you can see here there's no motion blur we'll  do pixel if I can spell it right pixel motion blur   and what this is going to do is add motion blur  to our footage so you can see here that where   there's a lot of movement it's going to add that  to the shot this is very heavy on the CPU so just   set it and then turn it off until you're ready to  render so here we'll do 180 for the shutter angle   samples I like to bring it up to at least 16 um  and I'll show you what the difference is but you   can see here that that motion blur looks nice and  smooth now if I go back to what it was you can   see there's sort of like this echoing effect and  that's because you don't have enough sample that's   five samples so if we switch it to 16 samples at  least that kind of clears that up sometimes you   might need to switch it to 24 but just remember  the higher that number the slower it is going to   be to process and you can see that the gain that  you get there is very minimal so I think 16 is   a pretty good compromise there and also if you  want you can just switch it to 24 turn it off   while you work and then turn that back on when  you render but I'm just going to keep it at 16   and I'll shut that off for now so this is pretty  much set to go we do maybe want to match our black   levels a little bit here so let's bring up the  lumry Scopes and I'll just dock it here next to   our our window here so I'll add a curves effect  you can see that if I do this it actually Blends   a little bit better one trick that you can use  here is that as I move the blacks on the curve you   can kind of see where the rest of the shot is and  where the metroids are right right so this section   here is the metroids but the rest of our footage  is resting somewhere around here so we want to   match that just so that it integrates a little bit  better so maybe something around there or maybe a   little bit lower maybe somewhere around there got  to play around with it but maybe somewhere around   there now it's very [Music] subtle but I think  it does a better job of matching the metroids   into the shot so that's looking pretty good I'm  maybe I want to give it just a little bit more   Darkness there so maybe somewhere around there  very subtle thing that's a little trick use your   Scopes to match the black levels and also you can  actually turn off the color channels and just you   know view the blue channel so now you can really  compare the two and see where you're at so you   can see here that like this area is pretty dark  compared to the rest so what we can do actually   is maybe just lift it up slightly but I did again  this is like a by the Numbers thing so what you   want to do is do it by the numbers and then do it  by I so switch it switch this color back on here I   think we're good I might want to darken that just  a little bit but instead of doing the Black Level   I might just overall just bring the midtones  down a little bit just to make them a little   more menacing now they are slightly more saturated  than everything else so I want to come in and and   we'll bring in the human in saturation and maybe  just knock it down like -5 or -10 um let's see   what -10 looks like that's pretty good the last  step I want to do is actually add an adjustment   layer on top and we'll name this film look so  film look CC for a color correction and we'll   add film convert and what this is going to do is  add grain and halation on on top of everything   now it's up to you if you want to keep the curve  and the chroma adjustments that happen I'm going   to go with super 35 I'll keep the halation now  one thing that I love about film converted is it   has this softness built in so I usually like to  just add a bit of softness on my footage overall   I just feel like it makes it look a little bit  more cinematic now that's debatable you don't   have to do that but I I like the way that looks  so I'm just going to add a little bit of soft so   we'll do about 20 and I think that does a good  job of blending everything together I actually   might bring in the chroma and and Luma and then  just bring up the saturation here cuz I actually   do like what it's doing I like that green in the  metroids there and I also like the colors on the   building I like what it's doing to the colors  on the building so I'm going to keep that so   what I'll do is instead I'll just bring up the  saturation to about 135 and that's looking good   we got the blue in the sky back now one thing  I'm noticing here is that our Roto matte layer   is actually below the film color correction so  if I turn that on you can see that it's actually   affecting the mat so take your Roto mat layer and  put it above the color correction layer and you   can see that now it doesn't affect the mat so  we'll turn this back off and the last step is   to turn our camera lens blur back on and also the  pixel motion so now we can add that motion blur   back into the shot and that kind of just implies  movement and motion and it's going to take a   little while to render but I think it's worth it  and I think it looks a hell of a lot better with   all that cuz you can see it's like you can see  these kind of coming in quick this guy is probably   in like a slower bit of motion I'm actually going  to render this out and we'll see what this looks   like so this is the final render and it looks  pretty cool the motion blur the Grain halation   and everything that we added on top really  sells the effect and I really love the pixel   motion blur the effect that it has on the swarm  of metroids coming in from the from the upper left corner it really gives it that sense of  motion and flow so if you like this video   please like And subscribe my name is Paul Doo  and I'll catch you guys next [Applause] [Music] time

Channel: Paul Del Vecchio

Views: 816

Keywords: compositing 3d animation in after effects, after effects compositing, compositing in after effects, after effects tutorial, compositing tutorial after effects, vfx compositing in after effects, after effects vfx tutorial, after effects vfx compositing, blender vfx compositing, compositing vfx in after effects, after effects vfx, after effects compositing blender, after effects compositing animation, after effects compositing 3d, 3d compositing in after effects

Id: jomuZ2ha8lE

Length: 17min 27sec (1047 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 30 2023