Hey guys, today we have another Assemble tutorial for you.
Josh is going to be show you how to make Oli fly off the screen like Iron Man.
If you haven't grabbed your free copy of HitFilm Express be sure to do that from the website.
Let's go ahead and get started.
Today we're going to look at the Iron Man portion of Assemble.
Now, during the sequence, Oli jumps up into the air and then flies off like Iron Man but
there's actually two parts to this effect and the first part we're going to look at
is this end sequence here where Oli jumps up in the air and, in the actual shot, just
lands on the ground again.
So what we want to do here is actually make Oli fly off the top of the shot.
And in a perfect what we would use is what's called a "clean plate" which would be an exact
version of this shot where we've just got Oli to walk out the way.
The issue that we had here is that we did take a clean plate, this shot here, but actually
the lighting had changed substantially between the two shots and because it was a surprisingly
windy day, the locked off camera actually slightly moved.
So what we have here is no clean plate and we're going to try and recreate that from
the shots we have.
So if I jump into this composite shot which is actually just the end part where Oli is
jumping.
What I'm going to do is go to the point where Oli is furthest from the ground because I
think the grass area, being that it's so detailed and it has such a big difference between the
clean plate I have and the final outcome, that I want to use as much of the original
shot as possible.
So now that I've got Oli kind of off the grass, I'm going to go up to the options here and
export a frame and I'm going to call this "Grass".
I'm now going to reimport this grass frame.
Now that we've imported the grass, I'm going to right-click on it and make a composite
shot that I'm going to call "Clean plate creation".
So the next thing I'm going to do is drag in my clean plate shot and try and line everything
up.
So, if we look at it there, it doesn't look like there's a big difference but if we zoom
in, you can see it actually moves quite a bit.
So all we're going to do is go into this and transform the position so that these two plates
line up.
I've done this before so I think this is -1.5 -0.5, is that correct?
There we go, they line up fairly convincingly now.
The next issue of course, is that I really want to use the minimum amount of this shot
so that it retains the look of our original footage.
So what I'll do here is I'm gonna make a mask and I'll switch off the layer and draw on
the mask where Oli is.
Now I want this to be a very loose mask because it's going to have quite a large feather on
it.
And then I switch the layer back on, Oli has disappeared but we've got all these kind of
grading issues.
Now, first of all, let's go into the shape and feather it out quite a bit.
There we go.
That's definitely looking better but we'll do a little bit of grading to try and make
it better still.
So let's darken it down a touch.
It's also feeling a little too colorful to me so I'm going to take the saturation and
I'm just going to drop down the master saturation a bit.
Now I think the sky and the building looks pretty much spot on but we've got this problem
down on the ground.
So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to take that clean plate and I'm going to rename
that as building, and then I'm going to duplicate the layer and I'm going to rename that as
"Grass".
So in this we're going to delete the mask that we're already created and we're just
going to mask around the grass area down here and try and grade that separately to make
it match.
So let's switch off the both of these layers so we can see where we are because we don't
want too much of this layer.
Make sure you have the grass layer selected and let's just draw around where the grass
is and then let's switch the grass layer back on and switch the original layer back on as
well.
Now the issue we have is our original mask is going down a little bit too far so I'm
going to go back to that original layer and I'm just going to drag the mask up on that
original layer just so it still covers those feet of Oli's but the only thing that's drawing
the grass is this layer up here.
So now, what can we do here?
Well again I'm going to add a feather and again with the effects we have it looks like
it needs to be darker still and then possibly in the Hue and Saturation we need to up the
saturation a little bit but maybe shift it a little bit towards green.
What we get to, if we zoom out, is a clean plate, which doesn't have Oli on it anymore,
and this is what we've been working for the entire time.
So now what I'm going to do is, again, go up to Options and export frame and call this
"Clean Plate" and we'll then just re-import this CleanPlate.png back in and we'll jump
back to our original comp.
So in the original comp we actually want to look at the momentum of Oli in his jump and
get rid of him as soon as that momentum slows down.
Here's where he's jumping with maximum force, but now he's already slowing down, we can
see because the motion blur reduces.
And if he's launching into the air he's actually going to get faster and faster so he won't
slow down so I'm going to go back to probably here, where I think the motion blur is most
extreme, go forward one frame and then drag on our clean plate which we just created.
So now, Oli jumps into the air and disappears.
So what next, well next we need to have Oli as an object that we can fly off the top of
the screen.
Here's how I'm going to create that.
Firstly I'm going to switch off that clean plate and I'm going to find the point where
I think Oli's arms are pretty much the most blurry but still in shot.
So this frame I'm going to use for the top half of his body, and again, Options > Export
Frame, Oli Top Half.
Save that on the desktop.
Now I'm looking for the frame where his bottom half is looking the most blurry, like he's
shooting off so if we go frame by frame.
So I think it's probably this frame here where Oli looks like he's going fastest so I'm going
to use this for the bottom half of Oli.
Unfortunately his hands are off the top so this is why we're going to reconstruct him
from two separate images.
"Oli Bottom".
Now what I'm going to do is import those two images and I'm going to make a composite shot,
I'm going to go for "Oli Top Half" > Make Composite Shot, "Oli Flying".
Now in this I'm going to drag in "Oli Bottom" as well but we're going to work on the top
half first.
Because Oli is moving so fast we can actually do a very loose mask.
I'm going to try and get the top half of Oli with this mask, so I'm just broadly going
round, maybe slightly inside because I can use the feather then.
So, I've actually drawn that mask on the wrong layer, handily I can just cut it and paste
it on the correct layer, and there we go.
We add a little bit of roundness to smooth it out and a little bit of feather, maybe
bring it in a touch.
There we go we have a kind of blurry looking mask of Oli's top half.
Now, selecting the correct layer and switching it on, let's do Oli's bottom half.
So I'm going to give myself a little bit of room so we have a nice space where the bottom
half and top half can cross over and we get any gaps.
So the next step is, again, to feather the mask a little, change the expansion a touch,
maybe increase the roundness and then if we switch on the top we've got the top and the
bottom half of Oli.
Now the issue that we have obviously, so they don't line up, but what I'm actually going
to try and do is re-center Oli to make it easier to manipulate him in the future.
So let's move the anchor point of his top half so that he's sitting pretty central,
and then let's do the same with the bottom half.
There we have it, we have Oli nicely centered in his flying pose.
Now to make things even quicker, we can just export this again as "Oli Cutout" and then
we can import Oli Cutout back in and we can go back to Oli jumping and drag on "Oli Cutout".
Now the first thing I would do is look to where Oli starts jumping, as in, his body
starts to move up, which is here, and try and position this in the same kind of position
and then add a position keyframe and then I would move forward past where Oli gets to
like his highest point and say that I would believe that Oli should really be off the
screen by this point.
So I move back a few frames, we can see where our animation and Oli start to diverge which
is almost instantly.
So what I'm going to do straight away is change this to a Smooth out.
He starts moving more slowly and then gets faster, that's the rockets pushing him up
into the air.
So we're a bit closer but what I'm going to do is drag this out a little bit and then
we have him shifting his arms up but he's still going too fast so I'm going to move
him back a bit, back a bit more and this is just moving the keyframes so the animation
starts and ends at a different time and now we're beginning to line up.
So let's move that back a bit because we said that he's still moving at a good..
Ah!
So here we go, he jumps and then in ours he just keeps going, faster and faster.
I think this will work well so let's try and put all the pieces together.
First let's switch on Motion Blur and let's also switch on our clean plate.
So now Oli is jumping behind himself but we can see where our cutout of Oli starts to
take over.
The next thing to do is to change when Oli actually switches from the real footage to
our version.
What I'll do is grab the front of the clip and move it to when our clean plate starts.
So now Oli starts to jump in the original footage and then the clean plate and our cutout
of Oli take over.
Now that transition is far more realistic.
Of course you can keep tweaking this until it feels exactly how you want.
I feel he goes off at slightly an odd angle here so now the transition is looking how
I would like it to.
I'm going to just tweak the angle, maybe only like -1 degree.
So let's RAM preview that and see how it looks.
Pretty good!
As always, leave your comments or questions down below.
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