Level Up Your Blender Skills with Bubble Simulation VFX

[Music] now before we get started I just want to say a huge thanks to all my patrons if you are interested in supporting the channel or checking out all of the perks I offer I will have a link in the description down below of course I'll also provide all of my files I use in this specific video so also check out that link if you want to follow along with me so let's go ahead and jump in I'm already motion tracked and Camera track uh the footage and then set it as our background images since I have tons of tutorials covering that already uh so we have this default scene with a camera and our compositing is just a simple movie clip Alpha over with render layers uh so now let's go ahead and talk about adding our bubble uh now let's uh shift a I'm going to add a mesh uh UV sphere and we actually don't want to use the UV sphere and that is because by default uh the top kind of faces right here are in tries and so that's going to give us some Distortion and some you know artifacting up there and so we actually want to have the entire UV sphere be basically quads and so let's go a and delete that I want to go ahead and shift a we're going to add a mesh Cube this time and so with the cube we can of course come over to the modifier tab I'm going to add a subdivision surface modifier and so now we can see that we have uh basically our uh Cube transformed into a sphere and now everything is in quads and so I'm going to increase the resolution to a six and then we can go ahead and apply that just so we have all the data here so now you can see that everything is in quads and so that's going to give us much better uh and more accurate results for this specific method uh so when I was playing around I actually test around with some physics and doing some soft body simulation all that kind of stuff um and I find that that is a little bit too finicky for me and you know gets a little bit too complicated uh since simul simulation inside a blender isn't the best in my opinion uh so what I'm going to do let's first of all just uh size this up scale this up up here I'm going to right click uh shade Auto smooth right there and so instead of doing the soft body simulation I actually like to do a modifier so let's go to the modifier tab I'm going to add a new modifier we're going to add the displace modifier and so with that it comes uh with this default value and so we need to add a texture to it so add that texture let's go to the texture panel and here is our texture right there I'm going to go ahead and make this into a clouds texture and so now you can see that we're having this result uh that is way too big so let's go ahead and increase the size something like that and then in the colors tab down here you can also change around with the brightness and then the contrast and stuff like that I'm just going to kind of leave it on the default values like that so one and one for now we can of course come back and changes uh through the uh tutorial so now let's go to the modifiers tab again and now you can see that uh this is basically the result that we're getting uh by default it set coordinates to local and so that's totally fine for what we're going to need it for uh you can see that we have uh this effect however we don't have a way to actually animate it and you know make it kind of wavy and you know bubbly and stuff like that and so what I'm actually going to do instead of coordinates we're going to set the uh coordinates to be a object and so the object of course we have to add that in so let's just go ahead shift a I'm going to add a empty uh so that is right here just going to do plain axis so now if we go back into here let's set the object to be our empty object and now when we move around that object now you can see that we're actually having the Distortion of course it has changed around our actual texture size and all of that so we need to play around with some of those settings again uh before I actually do that let's go ahead and talk about how to get our animation in so as you can see as I moved around it kind of moves around with us we actually don't want to move it around in location data we want it to move around in rotation data so if I hit R and then Z you can see that I'm basically rotating it like that and so that is what we're basically going to do to control uh the texture so that it um you know feels more like a bubble uh so let's go ahead and do that I'm just going to come over to uh the rotation Z over here let's go ahead and set an expression so I'm going to do hashtag frame then we need to divide that number uh we'll do by 100 now I believe is uh the correct kind of rotation and now you can see basically on every frame it's going to be rotating or thing like that and so that is looking good let's go ahead and come back out of here and I want to go ahead and play around with that that texture a little bit uh so let's get the scale uh or the sorry the size way up so we'll do like a five maybe that looks pretty good let's go ahead and uh do the depth to like three and then we can also contrast a little bit so that it's a little bit more protruded so that's giving a set effect I'm actually going to increase the siid just a little bit more because I don't want my bubble to be super uh you know like that so now that we have that uh what we can do is I want to go ahead and offset this empty and so if we offset the empty now you can see uh since you know before we had basically the empty right underneath of it and so now it just feels like the object is rotating we don't of course want that so again just G shift Z kind of move that out here and now since it's rotating it's giving us kind of you know differences and changes with the texture and so now uh you can see this is pretty much the result that we're getting and it looks very cool uh of course if you do want to want it to actually speed up a little bit we would just come over here and uh change this expression we'll say We'll divide it by 50 and so that'll basically speed it up by two and so now you can see it's much faster so uh of course you can play around there and get a result that you want so let's uh set it back to 100 and now we can go ahead and talk about uh texturing it and getting it ready for a final composite uh so over here let's pull out a Shader editor and to come up here add new material we're just going to name this bubble and then of course down here for a uh bubble it's transparent and also basically like glass if you want to think of it like that so let's uh increase or sorry decrease the roughness and increase the transmission and of course we need to come over here to the render tab we are in cycles and then GPU computer is on let's go ahead and change film transparent on just so we can see our background footage again of course we are getting our Sky texture into it and so let's go ahead and we need to actually get some of our footage Reflections in the scene since we actually don't have any geometry out here to Define uh those Reflections so let's go ahead shift a I'm going to add a mesh plane just going to scale that up and then I'm just going to rotate it along with the camera uh I'm actually going to go ahead and switch this over here to a 3D viewports just so we can have two kind of views up here uh so first of all I want to scale this up just all the way like that and then we can go into edit mode and grab this back face I'm just going to EZ extrude that up just so it's covering our entire kind of bubble shaped up back here uh so that looks good for our reflection now we actually have to project our texture onto it so that's super simple let's come back to the Shader editor I'm going to add a new material to this one I'm just going to name this one footage just so we can differentiate everything uh we actually need the principal bstf for this and then shift a I'm going to add a image texture and then we can just open up the image sequence that I used and so if you're doing your own footage you would just locate uh wherever you know the footage that you used I saved as an image sequence so that's one I'm was select here so let's open that image I'm going to plug the color into the surface and then make sure Auto refreshes on just so it's actually a movie clip instead of a Still Still image so you can see by the UV uh this is how it's being projected we haven't you know UV mapped it yet instead what I'm going to do is uh use the windowed view inside of blender so if you have the node Wrangler add-on so again edit preferences add-ons you just want to make sure you have the node Wrangler add-on it comes default with blender have that installed so once we have that installed we can hold control andt and I'll add a texture cordate and mapping node we just want to plug it into window and so now basically uh wherever we're viewing it from it's going to project that texture onto it uh let's go ahead and I want to set it from repeat to mirror over here just so the fall off is a little bit better and now you can see that we actually have some Reflections in our scen so that's really good I'm going to name this just reflections over here uh because we're going to end up having to organize some stuff over here in a little bit so as you can see this is basically just a uh you know opaque uh glass ball kind of looking object and stuff uh this doesn't look like a bubble and so what we actually have to do is get a little bit more involved into uh some of these texturing uh so let's bring the principal bsdf out we need to add a transparent bsdf and so of course uh we need to combine the two so let's go ahead and add a mix Shader so I'm going to combine that we need the principal bsdf on the bottom and then the transparent on the top so now it's giving this effect and of course that looks really uh wrong basically for bubbles uh what we need is we need kind of the gra glass material on the outside of the bubble and then in the center we need our transparent and so we need to define a mass there and so what I found in a tutorial I watch is adding a layer weight Noe and so when we add the layer weight we can p uh put the facing down here into the factor and then we'll change around the blend to like a .3 now you can see basically if we if we view the uh facing node and what that's doing real quick we can see that basically uh the inside of whatever object that we're putting it in is it's basically going to be black and then the outside of that object is going to be white and so the black in our case is going to be our transparent BF and the Y is going to be our principal BF so that is looking good let's go ahead and I'm going to shift a at a noise node because bubbles have a little bit of uh iridescence into it and so uh what we're going to do is use this color thing over here so if I click another color you can see this is what it's going to give uh so now we need to go ahead and add that into our bubble so I'm going to add the color into the base color here of course if I go back out to my mix Shader you can't really see anything it's very uh kind of washed out and very um you know not saturated so of course in order to make that a little bit bigger what we can do is come over here I'm just going to add a saturation uh Hue value node we can plug that there and I'll just increase the saturation until we can actually see a little bit more so about two for me um so that is looking pretty good we can go ahead and talk about getting the shadow into our scene since we do of course have Shadow down here now what I'm going to do is first of all you'll notice that the sky is kind of a um you know white color I could actually get an HRI inside this and play around with some of that but uh for this specific scene since it's such a simple scene I'm just going to make it kind of a white color like that so now it's blending us uh in a little bit and giving us more uh actual white you know bounce in our SC uh so of course I need to add a new plane for our shadow so I'm going to shift a mesh plane add that in and I'm just going to skip scale that up rotate that uh so we just have that in our scene of course I'm going to name this a shadow and so uh the one thing that we have wrong right now is that we actually have our shadow object and our reflection OB object Bas basically on top of each other so of course uh this is where we can start you know combining everything into collections to actually render out multiple passes inside BL so let's go ahead and right click I'm going to create two new collections I'm going to name a uh Reflections collection and then down here we can name this shadow of course let's place the object into these specific Collections and now we can go ahead and disable the reflections for now since we only care about doing the shadow uh so for now let's go ahead and we need to add a new material for this to get our uh you know kind of uh image back onto it so again we can come over here and name this Shadow uh and then let's bring this window out and I want to do that same process I did before so let's go ahead and do a image texture open that up and open up our uh you know image sequence of course this will might be different for you if you are filming your own footage so let's go ahead and plug that in here Auto Refresh on contrl T and make this window so now this is the exact same thing that we did before uh however we will see that we have a seam now and that's actually because we're plugging directly into the bsdf and so um that is to do with the lighting of our scene all that stuff uh basically the bsdf principal bsdf needs to be in there because we actually need Shadow data uh and so in order to do that so let's uh try to match this to the plate as closely as possible you can see that we're having a little bit of Miss match over here uh so I'm just going to try to blend that in as closely as I can so let's go up to the camera images I'm just going to change the opacity all the way up just so we can see that seam uh in its true value uh so I want to try to match this seam as much as possible let's go ahead and add a gamer node in just plug that in between here and I might try to lighten that up a little bit I will also notice that we're having some uh kind of different you know contrast and stuff like that so I might add a brightness contrast node in here and then we can increase increase the contrast you know maybe increase the brightness a tiny bit and then now I can play around more with this gamma node again we don't need it to be exactly correct uh just because uh this is just going to be used uh for reflections of our bubble and everything uh so that is looking good what we can do now is we can see that there is no shadow on the actual object and again that is because we haven't done any Lighting in our scene we've only uh kind of corrected the world settings so let's go and add a light to basically be our sunlight uh so let's go ahead I'm going to shift a add a light we're going to add a area light I'm just going to put that kind of where the sun is in my 3D space so you know kind of the top uh right of this so of course let's aim it at the actual bubble so I'm just going to drag this and put it to the bubble uh so that is looking good I might actually need to offset it a little bit like that uh so that is looking good of course we can't see the Shadow and that's because uh this light is not bright enough so we're just going to increase this until we start to see a shadow uh so now we can see a little bit of a Shadow here it might be hard to see on YouTube but I can definitely see on my end so now that we have all that and we have the correct texture uh so that we don't have any Reflections issues we can go ahead and come up to object properties I'm going to go back to uh visibility and we can make the mask a shadow catcher so now that is looking good and you know giving us a little bit of Shadow down there I might actually come back up here and we can increase it ever so slightly we'll double the size just so we can see that and get a good mask so now that we have uh kind of that shadow in our scene uh we can go ahead and start to affect some of the different things inside a blender uh so first thing I want to notice is that we have this white kind of cube here and that's actually the reflection of the light itself and so what we need to do is basically tell the light to only light the object and not actually be reflected in object so that's super easy let's select the light and then come down to the light properties and check this multiple importance off and so now we don't actually see the light in our bubble uh so that is looking good it's still giving us our shadows which is looking good down there of course um let's go ahead and separate the bubble into its own collection so I'm going to add a new collection bubble uh and we can just go ahead and put that Cube inside of there so now we have all of our collections where we can turn on and off of course we still have that problem where we're having the reflections and the shadow on top of each other so this is where we actually need to break it out into multiple separate passes now for this specific shot I'm just going to break it out into two passes uh one pass for the bubble and then one pass for the Shadow and so first let's rename this vew layer I'm going to name this bubble and then we can add add a new view layer I'm just going to name this Shadow and so of course let's change some of the collections for these specific view layers first for the bubble uh we actually don't need the Shadow on this so I'm going to goe and disable the Shadow and then for the reflections let's enable the indirect pass and I'm just going to turn on the indirect pass here uh that way we basically just have the bubble rendered but you can still see that we have our Reflections and you know stuff like that uh so that is looking pretty good and giving us an accurate result uh let's come back out here I want to go to Shadow now and of course I want to do the opposite I want to disable La the uh reflection since we don't want that in our scene for this Shadow pass and then the bubble I can set as indirect only and now if I come out here you can see that we're actually getting some of the uh Shadow data in our SC let's go ah and make that a little bit bigger just so we're not cutting off that shadow here uh so that is looking pretty good and uh is you know exactly what we want let's go ahead and uh first in order to save on some renter time since we're still in our creative process I'm going to go ahead and turn this down to 1024 and do noise off for now uh so let's go ahead and come in the compositing tab we can see that we have our bubble render layer here we want to Shifty and duplicate that down to add our shadow now let's go ahead and render out an image just so we can actually view what those are doing okay so now you can see it's done let's come back out here and now you can see that we have our bubble H which is looking good and then we also have our shadow down here you can maybe barely see that here of course we do have this Alpha Channel which is going to be very useful for actually compositing that all back together uh so of course let's go ahead and uh you know talk about some basic level compositing I'm going to be sticking inside a blender here usually if I'd be doing this for clients or anything I would be taking inside of nuke or after effects or anything that they need there uh so of course we need to uh combine the shadow back in because we don't have the shadow in this clip so what I'm going to do is I'm going to use a color balance node so right here I'm going to plug that into the um you know the thing here and that way we're actually using the footage pixels to actually in uh determine the uh Shadow and so what that allows us to do let's first plug the alpha into the factor is now uh I like to set it to off uh offset power slope like that and now we can actually make these Shadows uh more accurate to our scene because if you kind of view here uh basically these Shadows are a little bit more blue and so we don't want the shadow to be black as it is inside a blender we want it to be a little bit more blue uh so let's go ahead and do that so I'm going to uh turn this up so turn the power up and then we need the slope down and so now you can see we're having that issue where now our shadow down here is very black you can see uh it's it's right around this area is where I'm looking right here so now that's very black and you know kind of ugly and doesn't match to our scene we need of course make it a lot more blue and so uh once I kind of change it up to Blue you might be able to tell a little bit that it's going a little bit more towards blue and so that is looking much better much more integrated into our scene now uh just because it's more of a blue hue to it uh so that is looking good let's come back out to our Alf Rover and you can see this is the result that we're getting I might notice that the bubble is a little bit too Focus for us you can see that we're having you know kind of some blur back here so let's go ahead I'm just going to add a super simple blur node we can add that in here and I'm just going to for sake of speed just change it to fast gajen and we'll uh you know blur it like three pixels maybe something like that so that matches a little bit better into our scene what I also might do is go ahead and color correct it so I'm going to add a another color balance node place that there and I'll just leave it on left gamma gain and what I might do is mess around with some of the lift values make that a little bit brigh brighter of course we do have to set the alpha to the factor right there and then of course let's bring this I might bring this down just a tad something like that trying to match it in the scene you can of course play around it uh with it yourself and get a result that you like but now you can see I basically just brightened it up a tiny bit just so it matches a little bit with the reflections of the snow and everything it's a very bright environment with snow since it's a lot of Reflections uh you know coming from the Sun and then also bouncing off the snow and uh bouncing up into it and so that is looking pretty good what I actually might do is come back out to the layout View and let's make it a little uh this bubble a little bit more into the center so let's go ahead and I'm just going to move it somewhere like that and so of course you can play around with uh the physics properties and the bubble and the look there uh but now you can see that we're getting a pretty uh accurate result so finally uh what we can do is come up to compositing and uh let's go ahead and render this out so I'm going to render as a p sequence just because in case blender crashes uh we're not going to have lost all of our data and so let's make a new folder I'm just going to name this B2 and then of course we can name this something like bubble comp V2 of course you do want do want a u you know kind of thing at the end to separate it from the actual frame number so let's hit accept there uh now we don't need an alpha Channel since we're going to be rendering out the final comp version and then PNG is totally fine you could use exr whatever you want there and compression of 15 since p uh PNG is actually a lossless format we can leave it on 15 it'll just take a little bit extra time to actually uh render so it can compress that PNG down to the um you know lowest size so now that we have all that what we can do is come up here and render the final animation okay so here is the final result that we got from this video hopefully you guys got a similar result or learn some things on the way uh we have successfully broken it up into two separate passes for use in compositing uh so we can get accurate Shadows stuff there and also we have successfully made the bubble actually look like a bubble and not a glass orb like we had before and so hopefully uh this makes a lot more sense and you can apply this to other aspects of visual effects of course if you did make it uh this far in the video I'd greatly appreciate it if you consider liking and subscribing as it would help me hit my goals for 2024 uh anyways thanks so much for watching and I will see you in the next video

Channel: Jacob Zirkle

Views: 5,116

Keywords: blender, blender tutorial, vfx, beginner blender tutorial, vfx blender, blender vfx tutorial, blender beginner vfx tutorial, beginner vfx tutorial, blender vfx, vfx in blender tutorial, blender beginner vfx, camera tracking, how to make professional vfx, cgi, visual effects, professional vfx ads, 3D ads, vfx advertising, vfx advertising blender, bubble vfx, bubble tutorial blender, blender bubbles, blender simulation, simulation tutorial, simulation, simulation vfx, sim

Id: WaxeCRbADsY

Length: 20min 23sec (1223 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 22 2024