If there was a real muzzle flash in the scene, only the elements facing the front of the gun would be lit. We can simulate this by applying some masks and cutting out only the areas that would directly be hit by the light. You can create matte layers in most compositing software packages, but I will talk here in terms of After Effects to keep things simple. Duplicate the base footage layer and drag it above the light layer. Add a saturation effect and bring the saturation down to 0 so you end up with black and white footage.
The idea is that the bright areas of this matte layer will essentially define the opacity of our light layer. Where the matte is brighter, the light layer will be more opaque, where the matte is darker, the light layer is more transparent. Finally, add a blur effect to soften the matte a little bit. This tells After Effects that the opacity for this layer is defined by the brightness of the layer directly above, which is our matte layer. And voila, the light from the muzzle flash sits a lot more natural in the scene.
Following these 6 simple steps will usually result in great looking muzzle flash effects, but sometimes the situation might call for something different. My problem is I have never used Adobe After Effects. Does After Effects have a steep learning curve? Any advice would be very much appreciated. Hello and thank you very much for the feedback :D As for your questions: 1.
After Effects does have quite a steep learning curve but just search a few tutorials online and follow them. The muzzle flash itself you can purchase. This week I decided to cover the second half of the equation and talk about how to make your bullet hit effects looks awesome :. Imagine masking them out frame by frame and then you decide to move them or replace them with different footage.
You end up having to go through the whole frame by frame masking nightmare again : To avoid this, I have decided to go another way and it has worked out pretty well so far :. Instead of masking out the elements to sit behind my actors or objects, I rotoscope out the actors or objects and create an overlay layer. I can move or replace all bullet hit elements without any extra work required. Starting with the base footage, we first rotoscope out our actor for the duration of the bullet hit to create the overlay layer.
In After Effects CS5 and up, I highly recommend using the rotobrush tool to help you with this task as it can be a little tedious. Because the rotobrush effect is really slow to render, we render out our overlay layer.
Now that we have the overlay layer created, we can add some blood splatters for the bullet hit onto the wall behind the actor. Simply take a blood splatter elment and place it above the base footage but under the overlay layer. Without any extra work the blood appears to be sitting behind our actor :. Next, take an image of a bullet hole or a damaged plaster wall and place it over the blood effect layer.
Scale it and position it right over the centre of the blood. You may have to add a curves adjustment to ensure the lighting is correct and the bullet hole fits into the scene. Again, notice that no masking is required. One important thing for the bullet hit is the blood mist cloud.
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