How to create MAGICAL EYE VFX | Hitfilm Express Tutorial

[Music] hello and welcome back to another hit film tutorial today i'm going to be showing you how you can create a magical eye visual effects shot that can be used for your sci-fi and fantasy projects and it's quite a simple effect to do and it can be done inside of hitfilm express as well as hitfilm pro i am you doing all this inside of hitfilm pro so let's get on with this tutorial so the first thing you're going to need to do is record some footage i recorded some footage here of me opening my eyes and staring straight into the camera which it worked for the effect i'm going for however you can use this effect for different angles and it doesn't have to be a super close-up i just wanted to have a really easy way of showing you the effect uh and you also don't have to have this against black or dark background it was just that i decided to go with that more as a visual choice as you can see i've selected part of the clip using the trimmer and now i'm going to drag and drop this onto the composite shot button that is at the bottom of the media tab this will then create a new composite shot that's only got this segment of clipping i am just going to rename this to being eye tutorial comp and then i'm just going to hit ok so as you can see there is some head movement so i'm going to track the motion of my eyes so to do this i'm going to open up the properties of my footage i'm going to go over to tracks and press on the green plus next to track that will insert a new track and as you can see it's taken us over to the layer tab and it has created a red and green square i'm just going to drag this over my left eye and then i'm going to make the red box just select that part of the eye and then i'm just going to scale up the green box i'm actually going to move until the end of the timeline to make sure we're all aligned there then i'm going to track backwards through this shot as you can see it's following the motion of my eye as it tracks backwards as i do close as i do open my eyes at the start of the shot the track will go a bit all over the place but that doesn't really matter because we're going to be chopping off the track at that point anyway so i'm just going to stop the track there and i'm going to create a new point layer and i'm going to rename this to being left eye and then i'm going to go back over into the tracker and change the layer from none to left eye track i'm going to make sure that x position and y position are checked and then just press apply and then this will apply all of the transform data to this point and then going to repeat this process but for my right eye i'm going to go to the end of the timeline move the red and green box over my eye then i'm going to track backwards and then i'm just going to send this data over to a new point which is going to be called right eye track and then i'm going to select the tracker again and change the layer to being right eye track then press apply and now we've got two points which follow the motion of my eyes so to actually create the colors for the eyes being different because as you can see my eyes are brown and in the example shot that i did they were a turquoisey blue turquoise is blue and green so that would make sense but i'm now going to create a new gray layer and this gray layer is going to be where we're applying the effects and masks to change how the eye looks you can also use this with plain layers to create mattes and then do it that way and i've seen people do it many different ways but this was the way that works best for this effect i'm going to focus on creating one of the eyes and then i'm going to duplicate the grade layer and then change the masks and parent it to a different point so then we can create the other eye meaning that all of these settings and effects are the exact same for both meaning that we don't end up with mismatched eyes this first grade layer is going to be the left eye grade so i'm going to rename this to left eye and then i'm going to parent this to the left eye track point that we created earlier then i'm going to right click and select reset this will just reset its position to set the anchor point of the layer to be the center of the eye which is where the tracking point is this means that when we create masks we can create them around the center point of this layer meaning that then it's moving correctly with the track so the first thing that we're going to do with this grade layer now we've got it all set up is create the masks so i'm going to go over to the different masking options i'm going to press and hold on the mask tool and then i'm going to select ellipse mask i'm going to go somewhere close to the center of my eye and then start dragging out then i'm on windows and then i'm going to press alt and shift which will then create a circular mask that starts from where i started masking so now i've created a circular mask that encompasses my eye but you can see it does go over onto my eyelid and if i started applying effects to this it would start affecting the part that i don't want it to be affecting which is the eyelid so to combat this we're going to select the left eye grade and then i'm going to go to the freehand mask tool and then i'm going to create a mask that goes around the outside of my eye to create these rounded points i'm just going to click and drag and now you can see this mask follows the motion of my eye because it is parented to this grade layer which is set to be in the center however if i started applying effects to this now then it won't look how we want it to and i'm going to demonstrate this by searching in the effects tab for a fill color this is more just so i can visually show you what the masks are doing as you can see at the moment they're not actually cutting out the eyelid and it's just kind of adding on to it so i'm going to set the outer edge of the eye mask to being inverted and then i'm going to set the mode from add to subtract this is for the outer eye mask not for the pupil or iris and now as you can see it's chopping out the eyelid and it's just keeping the part of the eye that is visible colored in now i'm just going to delete this fill color because now we kind of know what's going on here i'm also just going to feather both of these masks by around four or five pixels just so that it's a bit softer this is where we can now start applying effects because we've kind of got this set up how we want it to so in the effects tab i'm going to search for hue colorize i'm then going to drag and drop this onto the left eye grade layer and as you can see it's just started tinting it to being a slightly different color i'm going to go to the controls for this and i'm then just going to increase the saturation so it's more visible i can also adjust the lightness however my footage wasn't filmed that well so it's kind of grainy and noisy so it's gonna be highlighting some of that however if you play around with this then you can get a look that is really cool i found something that worked quite well for this was also to add a glow so under the effects tab i'm also just going to search for a glow and this is just to kind of create a bit more of a mystical fantasy look to the eye so i'm just going to increase the intensity reduce the radius play around with the threshold and as you can see that's creating a really weird and fantasy style glow to the eye this is your personal preference as to the color and the style i'm going for and if you have a specific style in mind then feel free to play around with that using fractal noise different distortion different effects go crazy with this the main part of this that is required for creating eye visual effects are masks to contain this to the area that you need it to and the tracks however if you want to copy what i'm doing then add a glow layer and a hue colorize you can probably get away with using a hue shift effect if you already have quite brightly colored eyes whereas i have quite a dark i have very dark brown eyes so i kind of need to add some color to them and then just play around with the color effects to get the look you're going for i've just noticed that this mask is quite wide for the outside so if i just uh change that up to being slightly different you can see that it is going over the main part of the eye that i wanted to be highlighting and this is quite an easy fix you just have to go to your mouse layer and then just adjust it and as you can see there's already quite a clear difference as it's a completely different eye color to my other eye and if you apply that glow then it really adds that mystical fantasy pop to it using the hue colorize effect does mean that you can get a range of different colors and different looks by changing the settings up i actually quite like this green that we've got going on here so i'm now going to leave it with that then in order to create this for the right eye i'm going to duplicate the left eye grade layer and then i'm going to rename this to being right eye and then i'm going to parent this to my right eye track then go over to the transform settings and just right click on transform and set reset and this will now move all of these grade layers over to my other eye however this right eye grade will still have all of the masks that match up with the other eye which won't work for this eye because it's got to be flipped so what i'm going to do for this is just select the freehand mask tool and then i'm just going to move the points around to get this looking how i want it to you could completely redraw the masks which probably would work out quite well i probably should have done that but this is working as well and then you also might want to play around with the center eye mask just in case your eye is at a slightly different angle as you can see mine here is that it's overlapping slightly weirdly okay so i am just going to reposition these mask points just to make it so it actually has that selected now as you can see this looks really cool however if i go back along in the timeline you can see that when i go to close my eyes the masks don't change and we now have this really weird looking green blob that's just kind of sat over my eyes and that looks really weird so what you then need to do is go to the last frame where your eye is fully open and then go to the mask controls and then you want to open up the mask transform settings for your eyelid mask and then you want to start keyframing path then you want to move back along in the timeline and just adjust these points to follow the motion of your eyelid this is where it would if you don't have to have your character opening their eyes then you can save yourself a bit of work by not having them have their eyes closed at the start however it doesn't take too long and then once your character size are fully closed i would just recommend chopping the layer off there anyway and then repeat the process for the other eye and now if i just play this through you can see that the masks move with my eyes opening of course you could go more detailed with that whereas i was just kind of going quite quick with this however you could spend more time sitting and moving those mass points so they match up even more accurately but fairly quickly we've already got a really cool effect and as i said before if you wanted to change up the different effects then you can create a completely different look to what i've got going on here but using the same process and principles i hope you found this tutorial useful and if you did then please leave a like and subscribe and hope to see you next time goodbye [Music] you

Channel: NDP Productions

Views: 2,167

Keywords: Hitfilm, Hitfilm Express, Hitfilm Pro, After Effects, NDPProductionsWorkshop, VFX, Hitfilm Tutorial, VFX Tutorial, Editing Tutorial, Editing, Effects Tutorial, FXhome, ndp productions workshop, ndp productions, Eye VFX, Eye Hitfilm tutorial, Eyes Hitfilm Express, Eyes Hitfilm Pro, Magical Eyes, Chris Connor, Fantasy Eyes, Fantasy FXhome, Eye Replacement Hitfilm, Eye VFX tutorial

Id: L_wy8-ymOwo

Length: 15min 19sec (919 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 03 2020