How To Composite Rain VFX In After Effects | Adobe After Effects Tutorial

hello everyone ben assad with action video effects today we are going to create a rainy scene effects in adobe after effects we will be using our stone cloud assets as well as the rain asset collections which include stain on ground elements stain on glass and terrain itself this tutorial will focus on creating a gloomy scene from a bright day shot creating water puddles and of course compositing our rain element there's gonna be a lot of stuff to cover so without further ado let's begin okay so what we need first is of course the plate for rainy day conversion you may want to get an overcast or cloudy scene so you don't have to worry about hard shadows on your shot so i have this background originally from hdri heaven that i have augmented using camera projection in cinema 4d as my backplate so the first thing we are going to do is to isolate the sky from the ground so we can color correct them separately and then add some clouds thankfully the sky is bright and has different hues than the ground so what we can do is to bring extract effects and we are going to select blue channel and then extract the black point until the sky is isolated and then let's invert it great so we have the ground isolated however we still have the edges on the trees look a bit chipped so let's get refined soft matte and change the edge radius to 0.5 so now we have the edges a bit soft however this end up reintroducing some of the sky inside of the tree so what we want to do is to mask out that area only so let's create a mask around the edges of the tree and then press e and in the refine soft matte effects we are going to click this plus button at the bottom so now the mask is only affecting the refine soft matte effects now let's start color correcting this layer get lumetri color and on curves let's darken the middle and also pull down the highlights and then we're going to go to the color wheels and we're going to bring our shadow down and make it blue and then let's add hue and saturation and then desaturate it a bit perfect so now we have made the shot darker to make it more like a heavy rainy day however we can see thanks to our extract some of the alpha holes on our ground and building on the back so let's fix that by duplicating our layer here and on the below layer select the mask and turn it to subtract and then delete the extract and the refinement so now we have the whole field with our layer perfect and then let's create the sky background we are going to use the same sky that we had before so let's just duplicate the layer rename it sky delete the existing mask and then we're going gonna go to the lumetri again to make it even darker than before and then desaturate it a bit more to make it less less blue okay so it's looking great but we still have the highlights on our cloud so we're gonna cover them up by using our storm cloud collection so let's drag one of the cloud elements into the shot put it above the sky layer and then let's add more of the cloud and then let's bring curves effect into our cloud and basically we are going to go to the individual rgb channel and match the color of our cloud to the sky background once i finished color matching one of the clouds then i copy the curves and paste it on the other cloud next we're gonna add a lightning layer that came from our storm cloud collection to give our cloud some lightning so let's bring this lightning layer and scrub the timeline until we see the lightning and then let's turn it to additive and position the lightning to the sky and then what we will do later at the end is to create some exposure change to help sell the lightning when it appears but now we're just going to leave it for a second because we are going to add some wind movement to the three leaves so let's add adjustment layer and we're gonna add turbulent displace change the amount to 10 and the scale down to 7 and then add keyframes on the offset at the beginning of our composition and then go to the end and then move the offset so then the triple noise would move and displace the shot to make it look like the leaves are moving let's rename this wind now currently everything is affected by the turbulence so it's not just the leaves but everything has this displacement happening so to fix that let's create a mask around the edges of our tree leaves and then feather it and then let's add some mask for the leaves on the middle so now we have our displacement only affecting the leaves making the leaves look like it is affected by a wind next we're gonna make the ground look a bit wet and glossy using cc glass so let's duplicate our backplate name it wet map delete all the effects and mask to make it brand new and then let's create a curve to create contrast on the shot and then disable the view because we just want to use this layer as a map for our cc glass then let's create adjustment layer let's name it wet crown and add cc glass and then go to the surface and change the pump map to the wet map and then effects and mask and then change the property to red and then turn the softness to 2 height to 2 displacement to 12 and then on the shading get the roughness to 0.3 and the metalness to 95. you can also play with the lights to control the amount of brightness on the effect and then let's mask it to make the effects only on the ground so now you have this glossy effects which may not be that visible but it adds that extra punch to the look of the ground now let's create the water puddle let's duplicate the background again and delete all the effects and mask off this layer to start fresh and then let's rename it puddle alpha and then just like in the sky we're going to use the ground coloration to create the shape of our puddles so let's solo the layer for a moment and add in extract turn the channels to red and then increase our black point and also the black softness okay so everything looks great so far but we still have a very empty area on the right there we want to add the puddle there too so let's add another extract turn it to red again but this time i'm going to play with the white point and then i want to make sure the second extract only affects that side of the shot so let's create a mask for that area and then once again on the effects layer press plus to include that mask into the second extract so now the mask only affecting the second extract and then here i just play around with the feather of the mask and the next i'm gonna add refine soft matte and then change this to one so now we have our water bottles edges to be a bit smoother and then i'm going to get rid of the upper part of the layer by masking it and then turn it to subtract feather it and now if we go to the alpha channel we have this so let's create the actual pot of water create a new solid make it brownish gray name it puddle water and then put it below our puddle alpha and then change it to alpha inverted so now the solid is filling in the puddles next we're going to make a water ripple effects on the puddles because we're going to have the rain hitting them so let's add cc drizzle and now you're going to have this water ripples on your solid change the drip plate to 100 and then we're going to fix the perspective of our solid here by using corner pin to make the water ripples facing to the ground like it's supposed to and then what we want is to mask out our water polo on the horizon there so let's add mask and change it to subtract however because of the corner pin effects the masking is a bit offset from what it's supposed to so you may have to eyeball it to get to the correct place another thing you may see here is this weird wiggly edges on our puddle that is because of the displacement from our cc drizzle so let's reduce that to zero and then let's feather our mask and then disable solo to see the whole shot awesome now we're going to add another ripple but this time on the ground not the puddle so create a new solid and add fractal noise and then change it to swirly increase the contrast to 200 and brightness to minus one two five and then we're going to scale it down to make it really small and then i'm going to right click on the evolution and let's add expression of time times one two five so the fractal will be animating really fast and then let's add some blur and then change the blending mode to additive and then i just want to adjust it to make a bit darker using curves now let's copy our portal alpha put it on top and then we're gonna alpha mat our ripple to it and reduce the opacity a little bit so now we have our fractal only appearing on the ground and then the same as the previous puddle we're gonna corner pin it to match the perspective of our ground now we're really going to sell the wetness off the ground by adding some reflection on it so let's duplicate our back plate put it on top and then delete the existing mask and then what we want to do is to mask the object that we want to have reflection like for example this box here and then flip it upside down and then let's duplicate the layer delete the mask and do another one for the other boxes basically i want to keep duplicating the layer and create more reflections for all the boxes in the shot once i have all the reflections that i want i'm going to pre-comb them and then i'm going to mask out the bottom part of that pre-comp and subtract it and then add some weather so now we have this reflection sort of fading on the distance and then we want to reduce the opacity a bit so it's not too opaque okay since there will be a big rain happening we want the reflection to be affected by the rain so let's add turbulent displays to our reflection mix size to 7 and add right click on evolution and then type time times 250 add a bit of gaussian blur so now we have the reflection wiggle around as if it's affected by the ring and now we are going to split the reflection into two one is on the puddle which will be clearer and the other is on the ground which would be more faded so let's duplicate the poodle alpha again put it on top and we want to alpha inverted our reflection to it so now the reflection only appear on the puddle and for the other reflection we're just going to duplicate what we already have here and this time we want to switch it to alpha matte and then let's play around with the opacity so it's not too opaque perfect now we are finally going to add the rain first we are going to use the raindrops on ground collection for our ground so let's bring this one here scale it down and then we're gonna create a circular mask around it and then feather it so we don't have hard edges and then turn the blending mode to add and then we're gonna start populating the scene so i'm going to duplicate this put it on the side and then offset the timing to make it a bit different a tip is to use the high angled ones for the ring that are closer to the camera and the lower angled ones for the ones far away okay once it is populated you want to pre-compose to make our project more organized and then change the precompose to additive next we're going to add some of that rain hitting the ground on our boxes so get one of the low angled rain on ground collection and we're gonna do the same thing scale them down turn it to additive and then mask it and start populating the scene so for some of the angled position i used transform effect and then use the skew to match the perspective and then after we populate the scene pre-comb them again just like the previous one and then we're going to turn the pre-cum to additive and turn down the opacity a little bit let's also reduce the opacity for the rain on ground so it's not too opaque okay now the next thing we're going to do is we are going to add some water flowing on the surface of the boxes to do that we are going to use our rain on glass collection so let's drag in this one and turn it to add scale it down and we're gonna start adding these on the boxes and then basically you want to mask it to remove the hard edges and just mix and match a bunch of these other elements to populate the shot okay to wrap it up let's add the final rain effects using our rain collection so we're going to drag in the distant lane asset first and then turn it to additive reduce the opacity a little bit so this is basically the ring that is far from the camera and then let's mask in just the upper part here and then for the ring that is closer to the camera we are going to use the rain close element and then change it to additive reduce the opacity a bit so we can see our shot lastly we are going to add the lightning glow effects like i mentioned earlier in the tutorial so let's add an adjustment layer add exposure effects and then boost it up and then animate the opacity to match the animation of the lightning on the cloud and there you go creating a rain environment in after effects on next week we are going to continue this shot by adding a person into the scene so you don't want to mess that up if you want to purchase the rain collections that i used in this tutorial you can check out our website at actionvfx.com at actionvfx we provide high quality vfx assets for your vfx needs we have fire explosions energy and many many others we also have free assets that you can get on our website thank you so much for watching don't forget to subscribe let us know in the comment section below if you have any questions or tutorial ideas that you'd like to see next so see you next time bye

Channel: ActionVFX

Views: 11,433

Keywords: adobe after effects, rain, storm, vfx, visual effects, tutorial, rainy scene, sky replacement, water puddle, puddles, actionvfx, weather

Id: _ZUKLa0MY50

Length: 17min 16sec (1036 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 15 2021