Create a DOCTOR STRANGE Portal (w/ Action Movie Kid)

[Music] hi there Hoshi here and I muscle known online as action movie dad I'm the VFX filmmaker behind action movie kid where I like to mix my home videos but a little bit of movie magic I recently saw dr. strange which was full of a lot of really cool effects but one that I thought I could pull off at home was their spark-tastic teleportation ring thingy why am i posting this behind the scenes here on red giant TV well because for years I've learned a lot from the tutorials provided by Aaron Rabinowitz and Harry Frank and Seth Worley and I've been fortunate enough to meet these fine folks as well and I've used their software for many years this particular effect was perfectly suited for one of my favorite plugins trapcode particular I've used it on feature films before and also in plenty of action movie kid videos I'm going to show you how I made this dr. strange style teleportation thing step-by-step so first I had to fill my son James in two locations his school and then later that day at home knowing that a hidden cut was a big part of this video I tried to create a camera movement and framing that was generally similar between the two I used the photo transfer after wirelessly upload the video from my phone to my computer and once I was in After Effects my next step was to mock-up a composition that kind of showed the transition from point A to point B now creating a cut point for this effect required a lot more work than I'd originally planned i motion tracked the footage which failed then I'm most attracted again remembering to garbage matte out James I was able to create standard shapes for the ground and the portal that would appear this stand-in circle was especially important is the still frame of point B as a 3d object that would match the camera movement in Part A I use the original circle layer as a reveal mat for that still frame which I'm married to a point kind of farther back in space so there'd be a little bit of parallax now this part wasn't too bad but next came the tedious process of road owing James out above pieces of footage [Music] and then I used some really overly complicated techniques to hide the cut point now I had a pretty great piece of footage to start layering on tons of Doctor Strange style effects into now in case you've been living in the Dark Dimension you should know about trapcode particular it's one of the most simple and powerful particle systems for After Effects you can imagine it creates particles that react to the comp camera and some people have used them to do really cool creative things when I first saw this ring effect it reminded me of those mini firework thingies yeah those which are basically several spark spewing emitters that kind of force a central spoke to spin around and create that cool ring effect particularly to use comp lights as emitters point lights work as locators and spot lights allow you to aim the particles and kind of set how wide their spray is etc to have some simple control over the rotation of this ring I created a null object and placed a ret in the center of that stand-in circle next I created a light and renamed it emitter so particular could use it as the particle source and then parented it to the null in the center of that stand-in circle and with just a few simple keyframes I start to get something that kind of remotely resembles that ring of sparks I was going for and then it make them look more like flying sparks I enable the motion blur or the render settings which turned each particle into a streak of light using the physics pulldown I added some turbulence to the air and simplified it so it kind of look like the particles just undulated a little bit then I went ahead and tweaked those settings about four million more times until I liked what I was seeing then I added two more light emitters so there were particles coming from three points on the circle instead of just the one another great feature is the obscuration layers which are layers that allow you to block or obscure certain particles from rendering in this case I was able to use the already in place ground plane as a way to block particles as they enter the ground and kind of reappear as I came spouting up on the other side like they do in the trailer I use duplicates of my original 3d ground solids to create some kind of interactive lighting effects on the ground as the portal opened I duplicated the whole particle layer to create a more opaque reddish one that I placed behind it to make those bright particles really pop now I blurred out this layer and I turn down the particle count and turn up the particle size I also made a duplicate layer that has a bunch of the sparks kind of flying to the side using the wind settings that are also in air dynamics the beauty of this particle spewing rig is that it's a real 3d thing that you can move scale and why a camera around in the different drafts I had to resize and move this ring around a bit so it worked the best and I'm definitely glad it was simple as manipulating this initial stand-in circle in fact with a rig like this you could use a few simple keyframes and turn this firework into like an all-out beautiful 3d spiral graph of insanity pretty right I added universe glow to a 3d adjustment layer using masks to make it grab and enhance the edge of that ring then I used universe heat wave on a similar adjustment layer to add some classic heat distortion around the edges of this fiery ring for James exiting on the other side my wife suggested adding some sparks that bounce off James shoes as he got running up to the house this is both funny charming and easy enough to do with particular bounce mode I tracked the footage of James running up to the house which field then I remembered to motion track of with a garbage Matt over James and then I was able to create a perfect ground plane I use this ground as reference when I placed a stand in solid to move through 3d space to visually align where James was then just like before I created lights labeled emitter which I parented to that layer and keyed them to kind of bounce up and down with James shoes and then I told particular to use them as the emitter source first I got some simple particles flowing off the shoes and now I could switch from the air mode to the bounce mode I designated the ground plane layer as the floor and turned up the gravity which made the particles now bounce a few times on the motion tracked floor naturally I messed with these particle settings about 4 million more times until I really liked what was then I duplicated this particle layer ditch the bounce mode and converted it to a smoky particle emitter to add just a little bit of smoke now I almost like to blend practical VFX elements with simulations so my last step was going through and peppering and live-action stock elements to a few key places where I wanted to see some additional billows of sparks or correctly pops and that kind of thing each little detail really combined to make this one of my favorite final effects as icing on the cake I use no light factory to punch up the moment where the portal first opens and added a bit of wave ripple pulse just as it did I had topped it off with over light from red giant universe to add a bit of exaggerated glow to a few key spots and there you have it a pretty decent approximation of a major Hollywood effect using only a few plugins I learned everything I know from tutorials like the ones on this site well that and lots of practice and mistakes but I'm grateful to be here sharing these tips with you on one of my favorite sites thanks our unset for all of your great help and support over the years please do check out red giant universe and the trap code suite is featured in this video and when you're done with that feel free to see what my son and I are up to over at action movie kid just don't forget to the garbage matte out that thing before you try tracking that that other thing

Channel: Red Giant

Views: 140,325

Keywords: vfx, action movie, kid, doctor strange, marvel, gaming, red giant, trapcode, particular, universe, visual effects, portal, magic, avengers, daniel hashimoto

Id: xKYZdSa2Qk8

Length: 7min 13sec (433 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 08 2016