With Star Trek Beyond currently in theaters, 2016 marking the 50th anniversary of the Star
Trek franchise, and our general love of science fiction related effects, we figured the time
has come to show you how to create a Star Trek transporter effect in Hitfilm 4 Pro.
You can download the project files you’ll need from the YouTube link in the description
and we will get started.
Boop!
Energize!
Here is the finished shot we will be making.
The project included in the .zip file is already set up and ready for creating the effects
we need.
We will have a future video that walks through the exact steps I took to set this scene up
in case you want to try out the entire process on your own footage.
But for this video, we wanted to jump straight into the fun stuff, actually creating the
effects.
Let’s take a quick look at the setup, though, to get our bearings.
As you can see, the project so far has me fading into the scene, but it needs some effects
to make it look like I am beaming down to the planet surface.
Our bottom layer is the main footage, which actually has me in it the entire time.
The next two layers are background replacement, areas masked out of a still image of the location,
and tracked in place to remove me from the scene.
Above those are two point layers, which contain the tracking data which keeps those repair
layers in place.
The top layer is another copy of me, a composite shot containing a still image.
The layer inside the comp has a mask to isolate me from the background, and then the entire
comp fades in with a couple of Opacity keyframes.
Again, all of the steps to get to this point will be explained in detail in a future video.
Now, we can jump into the fun stuff.
We will be focusing on wrapping me in particle trails, then using light flares to add some
intensity to the shot.
The effects will be happening between the start of the shot and the 8 second mark, as
they need to end before the character, me in this case, stands up.
Drag a new particle simulator onto the timeline, starting it maybe 10 frames in.
To keep our particles in the shape of the character, set the Emitter type to Layer,
and select the Character Plate comp, then enable the Use Layer Alpha option.
Disable the Use Layer Color option, because we want to give these particles their own
specific color.
Let’s adjust a few more settings on the particle system.
In the General controls, set emitter attachment to 100%, and Velocity from Emitter to 1%.
This will ensure that after the particles are emitted, they still track with the source
layer, to retain the correct shape.
Under Movement, set the speed to 0, to keep the particles from leaving the shape, and
increase Life to 2.5.
Under Movement Variation, set Life to 0.5.
This will give us a half second variety in either direction, so each particle’s life
will vary between 2 and 3 seconds.
The particles now nicely assume the shape of our Character Plate layer, and we will
next focus on getting the look of the particles dialed in a bit more.
Rather than use one of HitFilm’s built-in textures for these particles, we are going
to create our own.
You could use the Sparks Star texture that is built in, or import an image to use as
a texture, but we also have the option of generating textures from scratch, right here
in HitFilm, and that is what I am going to do.
Create a New Plane from the layer menu, and set it to 128x128 pixels, and white.
Right-click that layer and make it a comp, named Texture, and take properties from the
selected layer, so the comp is the same size.
Find the Radio Waves effect, and drag it onto the plane.
Scrub the playhead forward, and waves will appear.
We will make some quick adjustments to dial in a spiky star shape.
Under Shape, change the shape to Hexagon, Curvature to around 37, and Pinch to 0.25
or so (0.26).
In the Appearance, Set Fade In to 0, and Wave End to 1.25.
Under Motion, set Frequency to 100, to fill the shape out.
Note that there are a few frames at the start of the comp before the texture grows to full
size.
Let’s jump back to the Energize comp and link up this texture.
First turn off the visibility of the Texture layer.
Then on the Particle layer, under Particle System > Appearance, set the Texture Source
to Layer, and select our Texture layer.
And the particles disappeared.
Remember when we looked at the first few frames of the texture comp, where there was no effect?
By default, Hitfilm will use the first frame of the layer you choose, so we want to select
a different frame to make our particles visible again.
Set the Frame Number to 100, and we get a bunch of big spiky particles.
Change the color to a pale yellow (255,242,177), keeping it close to white.
In the Movement controls, reduce the scale to 8% or so, to get them closer to the size
we want.
Now to get some movement going on.
We will use motion blur to create the trails behind our particles as they spin around our
character.
So first, let’s get these particles spinning right round.
Like a record.
In the Transform controls for the particle layer, move the Position X so it is directly
above our particles, at -211.
Enable keyframing for the Rotation Y property, on frame 0.
Move forward to 9 seconds, so we are past where the particle effect will end, and set
the rotation to 23x.
Plus a few extra degrees, just for fun.
Because we are using a layer as our emitter shape, the particles will rotate around the
anchor point of that layer.
In the Character plate comp, the anchor point is repositioned so it is centered on our character.
As a result, when we rotate the particle effect, it rotates centered on the character, which
is exactly what we want.
Adjust the Rotation X to around 15 degrees, so it matches our high camera angle better.
If you enable motion blur, we get some little trails behind our particles.
Not as much as we want, though.
To lengthen the trails, open the composite shot properties, switch to the advanced tab,
and we will adjust the motion blur settings.
Set Shutter Angle to 720.
This represents how long the shutter is open, and 720 degrees means that the shutter is
open for twice as long as the frame lasts.
Technically impossible with a physical shutter, but easy with a simulated camera, and it gives
us awesome long motion blur trails.
Set Shutter Phase to 180, and increase the Max Samples to 60, to fill those trails out
a bit more.
As the particles are blurred out, they also fade out a bit, so open the Appearance controls,
and we can use the Alpha Boost to brighten the particles up again.
I’ll set it to 5, but you can use more or less to taste.
Set the blend mode to Add to brighten the effect up.
Now, we are going to move into 3D.
First, convert the Particles layer to 3D unrolled, so it exists in full 3D space.
With that done, we can convert our character plate to a 3D plane.
This allows us to place him right in the midst of the particles, so they rotate around him.
In fact, he is already in the correct position, and as you can see roughly half of the particles
are now hidden behind him at any given moment, which will affect how many particles we need
for the effect.
So with that done, let’s adjust the particle count.
Increasing the number of particles means every frame takes longer to process, especially
with motion blur active, which is why we got the appearance all dialed in before increasing
the particle count.
We want this effect to have a bit of a slow start, and gradually fill in with particles.
So, at around 1 second, set the Particles Per Second, in the General controls, to 30,
and enable keyframing.
Move back to the start of the layer, and set it to 3.
Now jump ahead to about 2 seconds, and increase the particle count to fill in the effect,
to about 500.
It doesn’t need to be completely filled in yet, at 500 particles per second it will
continue filling in quite rapidly.
To stop the particles, so the effect will fade out again, move to 5:00 and enable keyframing
for the Active state.
Step forward one frame, and disable the effect.
Since we set our particle life to 2.5 seconds, with a variation of 0.5 seconds, the effect
will gradually disappear over the next 3 seconds.
Let’s preview render this and see how things are coming together.
Our particle movement is looking excellent, so now we need to do some compositing work,
to make them feel like they are part of the actual scene.
The main technique we will use for that is to generate a light flare, to make the particles
feel brighter, and simulate the way our camera lens would react to having that bright spot
actually in the frame.
Add a new Plane layer, matched to our timeline size, set it to black, and name it Flares.
We will use this layer to place our flare effects.
In the Effects panel, find Light Flares and drag it onto our plane.
Right-click the Flares layer and set its Blend mode to Add, so the black is removed, leaving
only our flare.
Then double-click the Flare to open its controls.
Select the Anamorphic Enterprise preset, then in the Position, select the Character Plate
layer, and zero out the Center offset.
Increase the Scale until the flare overwhelms our character (935).
Under Global, we can adjust the coloring to match the scene better.
Move the Hue Shift to 140 degrees or so (141), to get more of a yellow, then reduce the saturation
to a bit less than half (0.46).
The rays are a bit excessive, so in the Rays controls, bring their brightness down to around
half (0.45) and increase Width Scale to soften them a bit (2.1)
Now, with the effect looking a bit more like it fits the scene, we can keyframe the intensity
to harmonize with the timing of the particles.
Move the playhead to 4:00, and increase Intensity to 1.3, then enable keyframing.
Move back to 2:15, and reduce Intensity to 0.4.
Then move further back, to 1:00, and set intensity to 0.
Now the flare gradually builds along with the particles.
To have it fade out, move to 7 seconds, and set the Intensity to 0 again.
To add a bit more interaction that is offset from our main effect, add an Anamorphic Lens
Flare to the Flares plane.
In the Streak 1 controls, bring intensity way down to 0.2 to keep it subtle, set Orientation
to Horizontal, Alignment to Center, and enable both pivots.
This is a subtle addition, but it helps to make the flare feel more light it is generated
by an actual lens.
To add more excitement to the scene, add a Flicker effect next.
Set Amplitude to 0.1 and randomness to 0.05.
Again, these settings are subtle, but it gives just a bit of life and movement to the effect,
which makes the flare feel more like it is coming off of these quickly moving particles.
Then select our first Light Flare, duplicate it, and move it below Flicker in our effects
stack.
On this copy, change the preset to Anamorphic Streak, reduce the Scale to 600, and remove
the second keyframe from the intensity.
In the Rays, set Brightness to 1.0.
This effect, applied after the flicker, adds more depth to the flare, and helps to even
the flicker out a bit.
Note that these flares could have been applied to a Grade layer, but if we had done that,
then when we added the Flicker effect, it would have affected all of the footage underneath
as well.
We only wanted the flicker to apply to the flare effects, which is why we used a plane
instead.
And that finishes off the shot.
Let’s preview this and have a look.
Obviously there were some important steps that happened before we started this tutorial,
but fear not.
As mentioned, I will be walking you through the setup part of this process in a future
video, so you have all the information you need to create this sort of shot from scratch.
So please subscribe if you haven’t already, to make sure you don’t miss that video when
it is released, and thank you very much for watching.