Creating
Effective Special Effects
This is an article I wrote for the
Brickfilms.com Encyclopedia. Some of the links here may take you to
pages in this encyclopedia, just so you know.
Creating Effective Special Effects for
Brickfilms
A general
introduction to visual effects, particularly for Brickfilmers, by Nick Durron
Introduction
This
article, as you probably guessed, is about visual effects, particularly for
Brickfilms. I’m crazy about effects, so I thought I’d write one. It does not
have tutorials for doing any effects, but merely gives a general introduction to
the whole subject.
Why to use effects
This
section is kind of pointless, since if you're here you already want to use
effects and don't need to know why. The main reason for using effects, I
believe, is to enhance your film and allow you to see what you want visually.
For instance, what if you want a huge establishing shot of a city, but you don’t
have near enough parts in your LEGO collection to build it? This is a situation
where creating a digital city would probably be the best solution, though not
the only one. You could also build a miniature city to achieve the effect.
Effects can also make your film feel bigger and more epic, if you want it to.
Showing the sky every once in a while can do this, as well as pulling back for a
wide establishing shot (most likely digital).
When to use effects
Effects
can be overused, though this is not always something to do with how many effects
there are in your film but what kind of film it is. If you’re making an epic
sci-fi action picture, you’d expect to have a lot of effects. This would not be
overuse. Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith is 90 percent digital. However, if
you’re making a slow, romantic, film that doesn’t involve Were-Pirates and full
moons, then you wouldn’t expect to see many effects. If there were a lot, this
would be overuse. Effects should generally be used when they are either the best
way of achieving what you want, or the only way.
The
section above discussed when it is appropriate to use effects. Another
thing to keep in mind is if you are capable of doing the effect you
want. It may be appropriate to show a really close shot of a digital
spaceship, but can you do this and make it work? I’m all for trying new
crazy things with visual effects that have never been don before, but
I’ll only do them if I think I can pull it off reasonably well.
Sometimes, because of your limitations, you may have to do an effect in
a different way than you wanted to. In these situations, just remember
that even big effects companies such as ILM or Sony Pictures Imageworks
can’t do everything they want to.
Cinematography and Effects
You
may be great at creating effects, but this doesn’t mean they’ll look cool in
your film. Having a good eye for cinematography is also very important,
especially when working with 3D CG elements. The camera angle of a shot can mean
the difference between something that looks totally fake, and an awesome effect,
so it is important to keep this in mind. If you’re looking to improve your
cinematography, the best way, as always, is to study films with really good
cinematography. Batman Begins, and The Lord of the Rings films, and many Tim
Burton films are examples of these. Generally, if a film won an Academy Award
for cinematography, it’s good. And remember to
storyboard! If you don’t plan out your shots ahead of
time, it’ll probably show.
Software
Choosing software can be hard, because there are so many programs that look so
similar (although if you were to actually get them, they’d probably be
different). My best advice about getting software is to download the demo first,
if one is provided. If one is not, then try reading some reviews for it and
talking to people who have it. The single most useful program I have found is
Adobe
After Effects, so if you’re looking for something
general then this is the one to get. It is, however, quite expensive.
Bluescreening (or greenscreening, etc…)
software
There are a number of programs that can do this, but
After Effects is by far the best. Here are some other
programs you might want to consider:
-
Blue Screen Of Life
– This is a free program that isn’t too great at what
it does, but at least is free. This can also be used for simple masking.
-
Composite Lab
– I don’t have this, but I know it is pretty good, and
not too expensive. Definitely something to consider if you can’t afford
After Effects.
Image editing software
I find
that owning a general image editing program can be very useful, even for things
as simple as creating a texture map or background. The most common use for these
programs is masking. Here are some notables:
-
Adobe Photoshop
– Think of this as After Effects, but for still images
instead of movies. The downside is the price.
- Corel
Paint Shop Pro
– This program is much cheaper than Photoshop, but can
still do many of the same things.
-
GIMP
– A great free image editing program with some nice
features.
3D software
Here I’ve
included not just software for animating and rendering CGI shots, but some
programs you can use to build digital LEGO models.
-
LDraw – This software packet is free, and includes
everything you’ll need to build digital LEGO models and sets.
-
LeoCAD
– This program can also build digital models, and is
free, but is not as easy to use as LDraw. The best use of this program is
converting your LDraw models into a file type that 3D programs can
recognize.
-
Carrara Studio
– This is the 3D program that I own and use. As 3D
programs go, it’s not that expensive, and I can say from experience that it
is worth every dime you’ll spend on it!
-
Maya
– This program is the one to get if you have more
money than you know what to do with, since it is very expensive (I don't
have it). However, ILM uses it, so it must be good.
-
Blender
– A free 3D program that I haven’t yet figured out,
but is a good value considering you won’t spend any money on it.
-
3ds Max
- Another 3D program from the same company that makes
Maya.
Particle software
While
After Effects has a simple particle tool, which can be used for cool things such
as making text blow away like sand, it can’t do much compared to these programs:
-
Carrara Studio
– One of the unique things about using particles in
Carrara is that they are in 3D. Most particle programs are 2D, and thus are
somewhat limited in what they can do.
-
Particle Illusion
– The best particle program I know of. It is 2D, but
considering all the things this can do, that doesn’t really matter.
-
Effects Lab
– This software is significantly cheaper than Particle
Illusion, but delivers results just about as good. In addition, libraries of
particle presets are free.
Note: Composite Lab and Effects Lab are both created by the same company, and
can be purchased together in
Vision Lab.
Once you have your software…
… learn
how to use it. I remember when I first downloaded the demo for Carrara, I was
clueless. I eventually learned how to use it after pouring through the 800 page
help file, and, of course, working with it all the time, which is likely the
best way for learning a program. Once you know how to use a piece of software,
you’ll find that other similar ones are also easy to use. In this article I’m
not going to give you tutorials for doing everything, but here are some tips you
may find useful.
Tips
This
section has some useful tips for doing various effects. Obviously I can't go
into everything in this article, but you may find these helpful.
Tips for bluescreening
If you
have After Effects, like I do, then you tend to think that you can do anything
with bluescreening. As I soon found out, this was wrong. Having a well lit
bluescreen is just as important as having a good piece of software to remove it.
Here are two examples, the first of which has a terribly lit screen and the
second of which has a well lit one:
If you
don’t light your bluescreen well, you’ll either have
to throw out the shot and refilm it, or resort to
handmasking, which is no fun. Notice this third
example, where the bluescreen is dark on the corners
but is the same color around the building and
minifig:
A
bluescreen such as this is easier to remove than the
first picture because only the edges are dark. In
the final version of the shot, you can’t even tell
there was a bluescreen:
Another dead giveaway that a shot was filmed on
bluescreen is if the foreground doesn’t match the
background. This usually has to do with the coloring
or lightning. Later in this section I’ve discussed
how to grade your effects.
Tips for using particles
Particles
can be especially tricky because you’ll run into seemingly unsolvable problems.
For example, you might have a dark stormy night with lots of rain coming down.
So, what happens to the rain when it hits the ground? In every Brickfilm I’ve
seen that has rain, the rain doesn’t hit the ground. It simply disappears. What
I would do in this situation is have a spray bottle handy when animating, and
lightly spray the set after each frame. Once you add the rain particles in
later, it appears that the rain is hitting the ground! Keeping details such as
this in mind will help your effects look more realistic. When using particles,
keep in mind that movement is crucial in getting them to look believable. Most
particle programs come with motion presets, but these are not always perfect. If
you experiment for long enough, you’ll start to get a good idea of what looks
realistic and what doesn’t.
Tips for 3D
3D CGI is
undoubtedly the most complicated and difficult part of visual effects. Lighting
and texturing are the two most important things to get right, and they’re hard
to get right. After importing models into Carrara, I always retexture them. This
alone doubles how real they look – that, combined with clever cinematography and
realistic lighting, can produce photorealistic CG images. This does not mean
that you can suddenly do anything you want with CG – I wish that were the case.
You are still severely limited in what will look realistic or not. Remember, you
will never be able to do anything you want. Another way of getting your stuff to
look more realistic is to not show long shots, a piece of advice I keep telling
myself but have yet to follow. The longer the shot, the more time the viewer has
to study what they’re seeing, and the more chance they’ll figure out it’s
digital. Finally, if you make an object such as a spaceship digital in every
shot it’s seen in, by the end of the film you can pretty much guarantee everyone
will know it’s not real. However, if you make it digital in some shots and real
in others, and your CGI is pretty good, chances are the viewer will end up
guessing which shots are which, or he might not even be able to tell at all. If
you’re trying to figure out whether or not your CGI looks real, then study real
objects. If you’re working with digital LEGO models, look at those then look at
your real ones. How are they different? Why are they different? Most often the
difference has to do with either lightning or texturing.
Tips for masking
I don’t
know who thought up masking, but they were a genius. Masking is a relatively
easy way to make objects appear to float or fly. It is usually done in an image
editing program, although After Effects and Blue Screen of Life can both do it
to some extent. When filming your shot, be sure to take a background picture at
the beginning and the end. If you take one just at the end, it won’t match with
the first frames of the shot; the same goes if you take a background picture
just at the beginning. The most common error I see in masking is when the shadow
is erased. In the following example there are two pictures, the original and the
final versions. See how I kept the shadow of the hoverboard and the minifigure?
In
general, expect to spend a lot of time on masking. I
have spent 20 minutes on a single frame before, and
it could be even worse. Fortunately, masking is one
of the easiest effects to look believable. Zero
Gravity Rebellion is a great Brickfilm everyone
should see. It features an entire scene of a boy on
a hoverboard, and the effect looks completely
realistic.
Tips for other effects
Most
other effects that I haven’t covered above can be done in After Effects.
Lightsabers Star Wars-like opening crawls, blasters, lights, lightning, and cool
end credit sequences are some of these effects. If you’re looking to do lots of
Star Wars effects,
www.theforce.net
has a bunch of great tutorials.
www.CreativeCOW.net
also has endless After Effects tutorials that I have found
quite useful.
Grading your effects
It is a
fact that digital effects look perfectly pristine and clean. Your CG models will
look smooth and shiny (texturing can help fix this), your lightsabers and
everything else will look just perfect. There are two types of digital grading
you can do to help “age” your effects. First, there is adding noise or grain to
your effects so they don’t look perfect, and then there is adjusting the
coloring and lightning of your effects so they match your real footage, or visa
versa. If you have a high quality MiniDV camera or a nice digital camera, you
won’t need to add much noise or grain to your effects, but if you have a webcam
or cheaper camera, your effects will look out of place unless graded. After
Effects is the best program I know of for doing this.
Brickfilms you should watch
Here is a
list of Brickfilms everyone interested in visual effects should watch (and if
you’re like me, analyze):
The goal with visual effects
You
probably already know that the ultimate goal for anyone doing visual effects is
to have their effects blend perfectly into the film and not be noticed. When
asked about the effects, viewers should say: “Effects? What effects?” Getting
there is very hard. It requires a lot of work, time, and in some cases, money.
If you have gotten there, then you’ve done exactly what you set out to do. I
hope this article has helped you a lot, and if you have any further questions,
please Email or PM me (my Email is nick_durron@yahoo.com).
|
