This video is brought to you by Storyblocks Video.
Hey guys, Yannick here from Cinecom.net and welcome to another Copycat Friday.
And today...today we are doing an awesome collaboration with..
Do you know him?
Yannick, Doug is still here.
Hey!
I think you might have messed that up.
[child crying in the distance]
We did a CineBattle about this portal effect last week
and found out pretty quickly that the actual portal is not so convenient to make.
If you like to make it look realistic,
you're going to have to work with a third-party plugin called Trapcode Particular.
For those daredevils, I'm going to leave a link to the video from Zach,
aka CG visuals, in the description below.
He explains in depth how he can create one from scratch.
However, if you don't like all the work, you can also head over to Film Learnin'
and just download a rendered out portal effect.
I'll leave a link to its video in the description below.
Pretty cool, right?
And do you know who's also super cool?
Our sponsor Storyblocks Video!
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You can find high-resolution stock clips, backgrounds, transitions,
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You need something? They got it.
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So if you want to start downloading right away, go to the description below and click on the first link.
Like I said,
we are going to show you how you can integrate a portal into your shot
and we are doing this in three ways:
One fixed shot.
One moving shot.
And one where we go completely through the portal.
But first, I want to start with an easy one.
Something to warm up that filmmakers brain.
And guys, I'll try to minimize it with the duplicate layers this time.
I know I went a little bit crazy last week.
So sorry if I caused some brain damage there.
Now, let's start with the easy effect.
This is going to be the fake shot where we place our portal in.
For this, you'll need two shots from a tripod.
One where we are going to place the portal in and one where the portal is going.
An extra tip we can give you is play with light.
When your portal is opening,
it will also emit light on the environment.
To recreate this, we dimmed in the light when the portal is supposed to open.
Of course use orange light or the same color as your portal.
And with this simple tip, you'll make the effect more realistic.
Now for the post-production.
You can easily do this in Premiere Pro or in After Effects.
But for now, just let us use Premiere Pro to keep it easy.
Place your first shot on track number one and the portal effect on track number three.
Then you can position and scale the portal to the place you want in your shot.
Next, you want to change the blending mode of the portal.
Go to the opacity property and change the blending mode to 'Add.'
After this, you can place your second shot into the timeline on track number two.
Of course, we only want to show the second clip in the portal.
So go to the opacity properties and here you can use the ellipse tool to create a mask in the shape of the portal.
Next, you can feather the mask a little bit.
Now, if you have a portal that opens up, you can easily animate the mask with the mask expansion
to open up with the portal.
To give it something extra, you can also animate the feather.
This can go from a large to a smaller feather when opening.
And to really finish the effect, add a fake hand up motion to it.
This you can easily do by nesting all the layers
and dragging a fake handheld preset of ours to the nested sequence.
Oh! It's working!
[disgusted expressions]
That's not something I wanna see.
And it's now time for
Yannick's Fun Facts Fountain!
However, after doing some research about portals,
I came to the conclusion that it's super complicated.
The theory behind it is that wormholes can bend the fabric of space
and this can connect two points together
which are normally far away from each other.
And it's also a pretty cool game from Valve.
You can throw stuff through it.
[throws golf ball]
Jordy what are you doing?
You're supposed to say 'Yannick, catch!' before you throw.
(In the distance) Oh yeah. I'm sorry. Catch!
[disappointed face palm]
Anyway, let's go further with the effect.
For the second method. We are placing our portal effect into a moving shot.
Here, we are going to let the camera follow along with the actor walking to the portal.
Now, what do you need for this effect?
Well, two shots.
One of a room where the actor is walking forwards and a second shot of the place where you want to go to.
Again, you can use some orange lights to make the effect more realistic.
Now for this effect, we need to use After Effects because this requires some tracking.
So make sure that your environment has enough information.
This will make it easier for After Effects.
We even place C stands on the spot where the portal is coming to give it more information.
In After Effects, first place your actor shot into a composition.
Then we are going to track it.
So in the tracker panel, select the thread camera and let After Effects do its thing.
After the tracking is done,
You can now look for the tracking points that stand on the place of your portal.
Select a tracking point that is on the ground and right-click on it,
Then select 'Create Null and Camera' option and that's it for the tracking.
Before we can now place our portal and the second shot,
I would first like to create a hole in the first shot and this can easily be done with the track mats.
So create a solid layer and place it above the first child in the timeline
then make the layer 3D by enabling this checkbox.
Now the solid layer will not stand in the right place
So to do that you need to copy the transform properties of the null object and face them to the solids.
Before you can do anything, set the opacity of the solid layer to 100.
Then with the anchor point properties of the solid,
you can now position the layer in the place that you want.
For the size, you can use the scale.
If needed, you can also rotate the layer then create an ellipse mask on the place that you want your portal.
The next thing you now need to do is set the track map option from the first clip to alpha inverted
and this will leave you with an ellipse hole in the first clip.
After this, take your portal clip and drag it into a composition.
The first thing you now need to do is change the blending mode to add.
Then you can make the portal layer 3 deep and, again, place it in the spot on top of the hole.
For the last type of this effect,
Just place the second shot underneath the actor shots.
Again, make the layer 3D and place it on the right spot.
But move it a little bit back with the z-axis to give it a little parallax.
And that is it! Your portal now stays perfectly in place in a moving shot.
But one downside.
If your actor comes in front of the portal, you need to mask him out.
So let's continue with the next effect.
[item flies]
Let me try Jordy.
Yeah.
No. Stop it. I'm trying to host Copycat here.
Always throwing stuff at me.
But okay, let's continue with the last effect.
In this method, we are going to walk completely through the portal.
This effect is also the technique they used in the real Doctor Strange movie.
However, we are going to do it a little bit differently as you can see in the behind the scenes of the movie.
They just used a ring of light and a ground green screen.
Well, we are going to use a wall with a hole in it.
This happens to be green because it was the only thing we've had but this can be any color.
You just need a wall with a hole for the tracking.
So set up your green screen wall and place some trackers on it.
Next, just let your actor walk towards it and through the portal hole, follow along with your camera.
Now your actor travelled through the portal to the second location.
The only thing left now to do is to take a shot of the first world you are in.
This can be a fixed shot because the movement will be added in post-production.
Also, your actor doesn't need to be in the shots.
Now in After Effects, place the green screen shot into a composition.
Like before, camera track to shot.
Look for points on the green screen and only select those.
This time, right-click on the points
and choose the option 'Set Ground Plane and Origin'.
In the effects controls, you can now create a camera .
Next, place the second shot on top of the green screen shots and make it 3D.
Now again, scale, rotate, and position the clip in the right position.
Just don't use the z-axis.
Next let's create a hole for the portal.
For this you can use a mask on the top layer.
Just use an ellipse tool to create your mask
And of course set the mask to subtract instead of add.
Now the last thing you need to do is the portal effect.
And this is again the same principle.
Place it into the composition, make the layer 3D, and position it on the right spot, and that is it for this effect.
Another fun thing about this and that you can also do this in reverse.
So guys and the previous videos you kept asking me where's Jordy?
Well, I don't know either but let's look for him.
It's also a perfect opportunity to test out a new trick I learned from Grant from Film Learnin'.
Let's do this.
[grunts]
[portal opens]
Oh! It's working!
[disgusted expression]
That's not something I want to see.
[shivers]
Let's try that again guys.
[opens portal]
[shrieks]
Hey, Yannick.
Guys, what are you doing?
And
Where are your pants?
Now it might look like we're playing Frogger with no pants on,
but I assure you there's a perfectly good-
Yeah, we're just playing Frogger with no pants on.
No pants.
Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope, I'm gone. Nope.
That was rude.
Yeah.
And that was it for today guy-
Who threw that?
Sorry, that was me. It kinda looked like fun.
That was it for today, guys. I hope you learned something new and enjoyed this video.
Thank you so much Grant for this awesome collaboration.
Thank you guys for watching.
Thank you Storyblocks Video for the support and like always,
Stay creative.