Since I wasn't using the 'Set Extension' technique in any of my vfx film. I thought I should still demonstrate that I can perform it in some way or another. I wanted to make sure I did a professional way so I used the tutorial created by 'Video CoPilot', it takes you through the simple steps in order to create a desert scene which includes barren castles and an altered sky. This is the process I took, there is no roto-scoping in this tutorial either as it is quite old.
Tracking Section
First off I imported my desert footage, and created two empty nulls named "First" & "Second". At first I wasn't sure why they did this but after a few minutes I realised. On my first null I went from the first frame and tracked until my lower tracker point was about to fall off the view, I stopped my tracker and applied the motion to the "First" null; that now held the tracking information.
At this point I then shifted my CTI (Current Time Indicator) to the very last frame of my "First" track. Selected two new locations and continued to track until the end of eight second file. Once I was happy with the second track, I used the pick whippet tool to parent my "First" track to my "Second" track; simply the separate tracking information would now play into one another seamlessly. We have done this because our video panned to high up for a normal 2d track motion to follow. I could of used Mocha quite easily and got the whole track, but this is about using the raw software you have.
Matte Painting Section
So now I have a fully tracked video with all the needed information. I need to take my barren castle and add it in to footage. I went to one of the final frames and took a snap and saved it out as a PSD. I then went to Photoshop to create my matte painting. Nothing special, a little resize, some curves, hue and saturation, erasing here and there, duplicate and change a few times and match all the perspectives up. In about ten minutes I had some kind of simple landscape that looked believable.
Back Into After Effects Section
Once I was happy with the final picture, I could simply save the PSD and import that into After Effects. It has a great option that lets you pull out just one layer as I only needed my castles to go over the top. I moved my CTI to the frame at which I took a snap of the scene and placed in my castles. Again taking the pick whippet tool I parented to the "First" (Which also have the "Second" null information) null to my castles. Upon quick inspection they seemed to work perfect. We also placed some hi resolution clouds on in the sky to make it a little more dynamic, I just had to add a simple mask to the left and bottom of the image and feather them out so they would blend nicely with the original sky, a slight opacity adjustment and once pick whippet to the "First" null so it would move with it and we were good to go.
Finishing Touches and Render
Once I was happy with everything, I pre-composed the footage so I could then go ahead and add an adjustment layer to give the colouring style I wanted. As this was to demonstrate the 'set extension' technique I just pulled in Red Giant 'Looks' & 'Mojo' to quickly get that blockbuster effect.
For quick demonstration in a final render, I just hid each layer and added the composition to the render list, made one visible and so on till I got to my final look. After stitching them together I rendered it out one last time for my final video that shows each element being added to the shot, check it out below.
Tracking Section
First off I imported my desert footage, and created two empty nulls named "First" & "Second". At first I wasn't sure why they did this but after a few minutes I realised. On my first null I went from the first frame and tracked until my lower tracker point was about to fall off the view, I stopped my tracker and applied the motion to the "First" null; that now held the tracking information.
At this point I then shifted my CTI (Current Time Indicator) to the very last frame of my "First" track. Selected two new locations and continued to track until the end of eight second file. Once I was happy with the second track, I used the pick whippet tool to parent my "First" track to my "Second" track; simply the separate tracking information would now play into one another seamlessly. We have done this because our video panned to high up for a normal 2d track motion to follow. I could of used Mocha quite easily and got the whole track, but this is about using the raw software you have.
Matte Painting Section
So now I have a fully tracked video with all the needed information. I need to take my barren castle and add it in to footage. I went to one of the final frames and took a snap and saved it out as a PSD. I then went to Photoshop to create my matte painting. Nothing special, a little resize, some curves, hue and saturation, erasing here and there, duplicate and change a few times and match all the perspectives up. In about ten minutes I had some kind of simple landscape that looked believable.
Back Into After Effects Section
Once I was happy with the final picture, I could simply save the PSD and import that into After Effects. It has a great option that lets you pull out just one layer as I only needed my castles to go over the top. I moved my CTI to the frame at which I took a snap of the scene and placed in my castles. Again taking the pick whippet tool I parented to the "First" (Which also have the "Second" null information) null to my castles. Upon quick inspection they seemed to work perfect. We also placed some hi resolution clouds on in the sky to make it a little more dynamic, I just had to add a simple mask to the left and bottom of the image and feather them out so they would blend nicely with the original sky, a slight opacity adjustment and once pick whippet to the "First" null so it would move with it and we were good to go.
Finishing Touches and Render
Once I was happy with everything, I pre-composed the footage so I could then go ahead and add an adjustment layer to give the colouring style I wanted. As this was to demonstrate the 'set extension' technique I just pulled in Red Giant 'Looks' & 'Mojo' to quickly get that blockbuster effect.
For quick demonstration in a final render, I just hid each layer and added the composition to the render list, made one visible and so on till I got to my final look. After stitching them together I rendered it out one last time for my final video that shows each element being added to the shot, check it out below.
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