Hello, everyone. Danasa here with ActionVFX. In this video, I'm going to show you
a breakdown on how I turn this shot off miniature Millennium Falcon into the snowy
planet scene using VFX compositing. This is not going to be a fully detailed
tutorial. I'm just going to show you my general
workflow for this particular project. And of course, this shot involves
ActionVFX stock footage collections such as atmospheric smoke and fog Volume
one and into our free snow assets and several others
to create the snowy atmosphere. Effects on the shot. Link to these assets on the description
below. Before we move forward with the video. Don't forget to hit the subscribe button
and hit the notification icon so you will not miss out on more content
like this one. And now,
without further ado, let's get started. Okay, so first, let's break down the major
steps that I did to achieve this shot. First, of course,
I shot a footage of this miniature Millennium Falcon
in front of a green screen. And of course, special
thanks to my friend Greer, collector, for allowing me to borrow his Millennium
Falcon to use in the shot. He makes a bunch of really cool toy
photography on his Instagram. So check him out. And after I had the footage,
I did some 3D tracking and then built the set environment
in a 3D program and then composite the ship
on top of that environment. And then using action VFX footage
collection. I added some weather effects
and other elements to really push the scene
to the next level. So before shooting anything,
it is important to know what the final shot is going to look like
so you can prepare accordingly. For example, I wanted to do an outdoor
scene of the falcon in a Snowy Planet. So that means I'm going
to shoot this outdoor with a real sunlight so I can get a natural sunlight
directly from the source. And then because I want to remove the background,
that means I'm going to need a green screen. And then for the ground
that the Falcon is sitting on. Luckily,
we had this white table that we can use. So that means the ground
kind of already looked like a snow drain. And that helps a lot
with getting the correct like bounce on the ground to the Falcon. And this will also help for extracting
the shadow later in visual effects. Now, for the shooting itself, you want to shoot your miniature
with a wide lens like here, I'm shooting on a 15 millimeter
focal length because the camera is way
bigger compared to the Falcon. So we want to compensate it
by stretching the distance off your scene
to make your miniature look gigantic. And then you also want to shoot it
from a lower angle to really south
that the miniature is towering over you. And then you want to shoot with a smaller
aperture or higher aperture number. That way we have more things in focus
and not getting a shallow tilt shift effect that can make
the subject look microscopic. And then you also want to increase the shutter speed
so you don't get a lot of motion blur and then you want to record
in a high frame rate as well. The reason for this
is because we are shooting a small object and any small camera shake or jitter that we made
when we are shooting will be magnified and that large and fast movement is
what can make the object seem small. So we want to make sure to have
a very subtle look. And thus with high shutter
speed and high frame rate, we can slow down the footage
to make any sudden movement or shakiness less obvious and to reduce the shakiness
a little bit more. I used this small DIY slider that I bought
so I can get a smooth dolly move on my shot instead of just doing it
handheld. Now, one thing that I noticed
is that these camera settings are going to make your scene really dark,
so you're going to need a bunch of light. That's why I decided to shoot this outdoor
with real sunlight so I don't have to set up a bunch
of lights during the shoot. Now after we got the shot, we're going to go to the fun part,
which is the facial effects. So the first thing I did for the shot is
I slowed this down a little bit because like I said, any small movement is magnified,
including the doll in movement. And once that's done, I rented it out
and use it for VFX compositing. For this,
I'm using Nuke to do the compositing and of course you can do this
in any other of VFX compositing programs. So the first thing we want to do is to 3D
camera track the scene. In my project in New York,
I decided to do a manual 3D track of my shot
so I can get more control of the result. I have a new tutorial dedicated for this, which you can check out in the description
below. Also in Newark, I can fill in my camera
properties into the camera tracker note so I can just type in the lens
that I shot this with and then the film back of the camera
that I used . This is going to help us a lot. On getting a more accurate
tracking result. Once I have done tracking,
we have the 3D camera scene. So now you can export the camera
tracking data to be used in 3D software. But before we go to 3D, I want to isolate
the Falcon from the scene. Originally,
I tried to do a greenscreen key because I have the green screen there,
but then I realized the camera movement is actually very simple,
so it's not going to be hard to just do manual
rotoscoping of the Falcon instead of key. So that's what I did. I isolated the Falcon using rotoscope. So now the 3D environment for the 3D
software I am using Unreal Engine. Now, of course you can use any software. This is just my preference. So in unreal
we want to build a new sequence and a camera and then import the camera
tracking data that we have to the sequence and then we can start
building our environment. I am using several 3D models and material
shader assets from Quixel.com as well as others from CGtrader to help
create this snowy mountain environment. You can check out the 3D assets
that I used on the description below. One trick to make your life complete
really look like it's stuck inside of your 3D world
is to add an object in front of your plate, like this
rock here that I put on the foreground. This creates an impression
that your life actually plate is in the middle of the scene
and not just on top of it . And then for the lighting,
I'm using the snow layer I from Polly Heaven that matches
with the lighting of my plate. One of the benefits of using a nuke is
we can use the angle reader node to have a direct life link
between the 3D scene building and nuke. So that way
I can do a lot of compositing in Nuke to make sure that the 3D scene
that I'm building is correct. And once that's done, I rented out the 3D
environment using the unreal reader node. If you want to know more about this part,
you can check out my tutorial on Unreal Reader
node in the description below. So for the plate,
I actually rented out two backgrounds, one with the foreground rock,
and the other is just a plain clean plate with all the foreground rock
and you will find the reason why. So first on the plain background,
I added a sky from the HDRI plate that I used earlier
and then added in some atmospheric depth. And then before adding our falcon,
I added the shadow. And how I got the shadow is very simple
because we already have the white ground on the plate. We can just use luminance key
to generate an alpha matte
that we can use to create a shadow. So now we have an accurate shadow
based on the plate, and then we want to put in our falcon
on top of the shadow. Next, I use the background render
that has the Falcon Rock and then using crypto, Matt isolated the rock
and put it on top of the sea. So the reason why I have the foreground
rock as a separate layer is because I want to add some depth field
or a defocus on the foreground rock. And if I add a bunch of blurriness
on the rock, that means some of the stuff on the background would be visible. So I need that clean plate
off the background. Okay, so after a few color correction,
I added some atmosphere and this is what we have. So because this is a snowy planet, I wanted the Falcon
to have some snow building on top of it. To do that,
I use this cool and simple trick where by using a clear node
isolated to highlight areas of the plate and then combust
only those bright areas on top. This creates an impression
that there is some white snow building on top of our falcon and then it's time
to add some action VFX elements. I slept in some of our ice
and frost elements to the falcon to create a frosting textures on the ship to make it look like the assets is sitting
on the surface of the Falcon. I used some projection mapping
so we knew we could generate a real 3D mesh of our scene
using the point cloth generator. And once I have the 3D mesh,
I would then just project my ice and frost elements to it. That way they would stick and follow the curvature of the ship
and then using the aluminum ski again, I was able to break up
the frosting textures based on the little details of the ship
so it doesn't look like just a flat layer
sitting on top of the falcon. And then I also added some snow to. From our free snow texture collection
on top of the ship as well. And then after that, I wanted some windy snow effects
that is buffeting on top of the ship. So I just added the side
fog from atmospheric smoke involved as well as these steam jet assets
and scatter them around the ship. And then for the atmospheric
look of the environment, I used atmospheric smoke
and fork to populate the scene. And then I also added some snowfall
from our windy snow collection. And then using the phrase snow effects,
I added one that is close to the camera and then reframed the shot a bit. And that was how I composite this
miniature shot into a snowy environment. And of course, there was a brief overview
of this VFX shot. So if you have any questions,
let us know in the comments section below. And also, if you want to purchase
the assets that are used in this tutorial, you can check out our website at actionVFX dot com. At ActionVFX, we provide high quality
VFX assets for your VFX needs. We have fire, explosions, energy and many,
many others. You can also sign up for our action VFX
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