Hey guys, thanks for joining us for another tutorial.
This week we are welcoming back the HitFilm legend that is Simon Jones and he's going
to be showing you how he created some of the visual effects for Atomic Productions' latest
short film, The Splinter Cell.
Let's jump into the software and take a look at how it works.
When Atomic Productions put out a new short film you know it’s going to be something
special.
That’s why I pretty much say yes whenever they ask me to jump on board with them.
My name’s Simon Jones and today I’m slipping the ol’ night vision goggles back on to
take you through one of the key shots I provided for The Splinter Cell: Part 2.
Here’s the shot.
There’s two distinct parts to the visual effects and I’m going to cover both of them
in this tutorial.
The obvious one is the night vision look, including the highlighting of the actors.
What’s HOPEFULLY less obvious is that this entire shot is fabricated from the ground
up, created inside HitFilm Pro, and was never actually filmed.
Let’s break it apart.
I start off with 3 elements: this still image, and these two green screen clips.
Step one is to convert the still image into a projected 3D shot.
Think of how a real life projector will take an image and display it on any kind of surface
that you point it at.
In HitFilm the concept is the same - I’m projecting the image onto carefully positioned
3D planes.
This turns the image into a 3D scene with real depth.
Step two is some good old fashioned green screen work, isolating both of the actors.
Once that’s done they can be dropped into place anywhere in the 3D scene.
Artificial shadows and some foreground props were used to increase the sense of this being
a real shot.
Because the scene now existed in 3D, it’s possible to run lights through it.
I moved a green light through a blacked-out version of the scene, and this was then composited
back onto the main shot, creating the impression of the night vision ‘scan’.
The color cycle effect was then used on the actors to create the ‘heat map’ appearance,
timed to only appear after they were scanned by the night vision.
Finally the entire shot was run through a bunch of grading filters to give it the main
night vision look.
First up, I’m going to make a new 1080p composite shot.
And into this I’ll drop the image, then I’ll scale the image down until it’s just
a touch wider than the frame.
And this is going to be the starting point for our shot.
I’m going to call the image ‘Source’.
Now I need to start constructing my 3D scene.
From the new menu I’ll create a new plane, set to 3000x3000 and called ‘Surface’.
I've gone for a pretty high resolution here and that's because we're going to be projecting
onto it.
Having the plane be higher resolution means we'll get better results.
It doesn’t really matter what colour the plane is so I'll just hit 'OK'.In the Effects
menu I’ll find the Projector effect and add it to the plane, followed by the Grid
effect.
I’ll now convert both of these layers on the timeline to be 3D.
The camera that has now appeared I’ll rename to ‘Primary’, and then I’ll hit Ctrl+D
to duplicate it.
The duplicate I’ll rename to ‘Projector’.I’ll drag the Projector down so it sits just above
the image.
Ok this is all part of the set up for the projector so bear with me.
I'm going doing to turn off the image leaving just the grid pattern on white.
In the ‘Surface’ layer, I’ll go into the projector settings.
There aren’t that many settings in here, but they can take a moment to wrap your head
around nonetheless.
Before I start messing with the projector, I’m going to change the grid effect’s
blend mode to ‘Normal’.
This means that we’ll be able to see the projection underneath the grid which is then
composited on top of it.
So, the ‘Projection from’ setting refers to what we are actually projecting.
Imagine it to be the slide that you're slotting into your projector, it's what we're going
to see.
I’ll select the Source image here.
The ‘Camera’ setting determines the projector’s point of view.
If it were a real projector, think of this like the light shining through the slide.
I’m going to choose my ‘Projector’ camera, which is currently staring right at the Source
image.
So far so good.
Now to position this plane so that it can be our new 3D floor.
I'll duplicate the Source layer, set that duplicate back to 2D and rename it to ‘Reference’.
This is simply so that I can see the image for reference, without it interfering with
the 3D scene.
It’s important here to realise that what we’re doing is creating an approximation
of this scene.
There’s no need to create a completely accurate and realistic recreation of the space - if
I wanted that I wouldn’t be doing it using planes inside HitFilm and would instead go
to a dedicated 3D modelling package.
I’ll start by rotating the X axis, using the grid to start aligning the plane by eye
along the floor in the photo.
I’ll need to adjust the Z and Y rotation slightly as well.
This is something of a trial and error process, which again highlights how this is an approximation
rather than a simulation but for this particular shot it's everything we need.
Once I’m happy with the floor, I’ll move on to other geometry.
The back wall is a good next step.
I’ll duplicate the floor, rename it, and then adjust the plane’s rotation to match
the back wall.
This is where the grid becomes especially useful - it’s important for the back wall
to be positioned correctly relative the floor and camera.
The easy way to do this is to move the Wall plane back in space, watching how the grids
intersect with each other.
When the grid intersection matches the intersection point of the wall and the floor in the photo,
then we’re good to go.
I’ll do the left wall now.
Same general tactic - duplicating that plane, rotating it as required, then sliding it into
position and using the grid intersections as reference for correct placement.
If I hold down the Alt key and click and drag on the back wall, I can orbit the camera around.
You can see how the left side of the space is now modelled simply in 3D space, with the
image projected onto the floor, the left wall and back wall.
It all looks a bit crazy on the right because we haven’t added any geometry there.
Remember that it’s always the camera on the highest layer that is controlled in the
viewer, which means we’re altering our ‘Primary’ camera here.
The ‘Projector’ camera remains static, pointing straight at the source layer.
Building up the scene is a matter of adding and positioning planes as required by your
project image.
The ceiling is easy - it’s a direct duplicate of the floor, raised up into position.
Some foreground elements like the steel girder will need additional masking work to match
their shape.
First get the layer into position, then use the pen tool to draw the shape as required
around the object, making sure that you leave enough room outside the frame so you can move
the camera around.
In this particular image something is now very apparent - those diagonal wooden beams
are causing all kinds of visual glitches.
Even if I add a plane for each beam, it still doesn’t work because as soon as the camera
moves it reveals the original version of the beam in the image, which becomes increasingly
warped as it's projected onto incorrect 3D planes.
This is because the foreground wooden beam is being projected onto the surfaces intended
for the floor and walls.
It immediately gives the game away.
If you’re sourcing and taking photographs for use in a projected scene like this, always
try to avoid foreground elements such as this which cross over a wide area of perspective
depth.
It’s better to add this stuff in through compositing later rather than having to deal
with it in the original source.
In this case because I was creating the shot for Atomic and had to stick to the provided
material, I went for Plan B - which is painting out the tricky items.
You can use your preferred image editor for this, although you’ll want it to have a
clone stamp tool.
Here you can see I’m cloning one part of the image to clean up another part.
This is painstaking and tedious work, hence it’s best avoided if possible - but the
end result was this ‘clean’ version of the shot, without the foreground wooden beams.
So back in HitFilm, I’ll add the clean version of the image and copy the Transform position
and scale properties from the original Source layer, and then paste them onto the same properties
on the clean version so that they match completely.
In the Timeline search box I’ll search for ‘Projection’, then flick all the settings
over to the new, clean version.
Optionally, you can add the beams back in as new layers if you want to.
So how much additional detail you put in now is up to you and the needs of the shot and
your patience.
I’m going to skip forward to the completed scene, so that we can focus on the next element:
getting the actors in.
I’m not going to cover green screening in this tutorial because there are already at
least nine thousand tutorials on that subject.
All I will say is to make sure that you do your keying and masking in dedicated composite
shots, for each actor.
This way all that processing is held within that composite shot, and once you’ve got
it nailed you can start proxying those shots so that from that point onwards they’ll
perform at maximum speed.
So, here I am with keyed actors.
I can now drop those composite shots into the scene.
I’ll set the layer to 3D plane - note how his feet have disappeared into the floor.
We can use that to position him accurately in 3D space.
First I’m going to adjust the layer’s anchor point so that it sits on the actor’s
feet.
This will make positioning easier.
I’ll move him back down until he hits the floor.
Right now he’s a bit of a giant, so I’ll shrink him down relative to his feet position
which is really handy.
Depending on how you’ve set up your scene, you can even position your composited actors
behind some of the scenery.
For this shot I positioned them behind layers I was projecting onto, which really helps
to sell the illusion of it being a real, deep 3D space.
Bear in mind when working with projected sets like this that it’s still primarily an illusion,
so don’t get too ambitious with your camera moves.
Subtle, small motion stuff works fine, but it’s not the same as having a properly modelled
and textured 3D scene.
Time to get rid of the grids, now that we don’t need them anymore.
In the Timeline search I’ll search for ‘Grid’ and switch them all off.
I won’t bother to delete them, just in case I want them back on for reference at another
time.
An interesting aspect of having a projected space is that you can apply lighting effects
to it.
For example, let’s give this guy a shadow.
First I’ll set the actor layer to cast shadows in Material properties, then I’ll search
for ‘Illuminated’ and turn it off for all layers.
I want this light casting a shadow, but not changing the actual lighting in the shot.
I can now position the light to roughly match the real lighting in the photograph.
The actor will then cast his shadow realistically onto the floor or walls, making it look like
he’s really part of the scene.
So once I had the core of the shot finished, I could now create the scan version.
For this I duplicated the entire composite shot, naming the duplicate ‘Scan’.
In the Scan version I searched for ‘Illuminated’ and turned it back on for all layers.
I’ll turn off the shadow light, as we won’t be using it.
Instead, I’ll add a new light and set it to be a bright green.
By carefully setting the falloff distance, I can use this light to illuminate only part
of the set.
This light can then be animated to move through the scene from foreground to background, casting
green light as it goes.
Because this is the only light in the scene, anything not lit by the green light remains
completely dark.
Back in the main composite shot I can now add the Scan composite shot as a new layer.
This layer I set to ‘Add’ blend mode, which removes the black but retains the illuminated
green.
This takes on the appearance of an overlay ‘scan’ on top of the original shot.
I used the ‘TV damage’ effect to add some distortion to the scan layer, so that it didn’t
appear too clean.
It’s a good idea again to create a proxy version of the Scan, in order to speed up
your rendering.
Once the hard work of creating the projected scene is complete, setting up cool lighting
effects like his is actually surprisingly simple.
One thing to bear in mind is that if you change the position of anything in the main composite
shot, including the camera, you’ll then need to replicate that over in the Scan version,
otherwise they’ll get out of sync and look super weird.
That’s why you want to get your shot as final as possible BEFORE then doing the scan.
The last component of the scan was the ‘heat map’ highlighting of the actors.
Because they were greenscreened it was really easy to apply grading only to them without
affecting anything else.
I used the ‘colour cycle’ effect because it makes this kind of thing really easy, all
I needed to do was set the ‘alpha’ to ‘Original’ so that it wasn't just taking
on the whole layer but was only the greenscreened area, and then I select the ‘hue cycle'
preset.
And that's about all there was to it.
Having the effect ‘turn on’ was a simple matter of keyframing the ‘blend with original’
property, timed with the movement of the scan.
So the final part of the Splinter Cell 2 shot was the night vision ‘look’.
For this I created a new composite shot containing the main shot.
To this I added a grade layer and started adding effects.
First there’s ‘Curves’ effect, because you’re not allowed to work on a video without
using Curves.
I used it to increase contrast and darken the shot, as well as suppressing the Red channel.
The result of lowering the red channel is to make the shot look more green overall.
I then used the Scan Lines effect.
Some of this detail is lost on YouTube, but it gives the shot a nice bit of extra texture.
I increased the frequency to make it more subtle.
Film grain was used to make the shot look less digital - looking at the finished film,
I actually rather wish I’d done more in this regard.
Finally, I used Cine Style to boost up the look, boosting exposure and adjusting the
color until I ended up with something that looked good.
And that’s the creation of the Splinter Cell 2 night vision shots.
It’s an unusual combination of techniques which can be re-applied to all kinds of different
scenarios.
If you make use of them in your own projects be sure to let us know!
In the mean time, many thanks for watching and I'll see you all soon.
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