foreign
hello everyone i'm zach and welcome back to another hit film tutorial today we'll
be looking at how to create magical energy effects inspired by marvel's shengchi and
the legend of the ten rings hit film express users can create some great energy effects
for free but some extra details require a few add-ons speaking of add-ons if you'd like the
chance to receive an express add-on pack of your choice for free reply to the pinned comment below
with the name of the add-on within the first two hours of this video going live you can
find the project files for this effect in the video description if you'd like to follow along
footage for this battle scene was filmed in front of a green screen so we could change out the
background the two actors were filmed separately so we could better use the green screen space we
had available if you need your actor to fully fit within the frame you can try rotating your camera
and recording in the vertical or portrait orientation you'll also need to track point
layers to your actors hands this can be done with hitfilm's 2d point tracker along with some manual
adjustments for the blurry areas to learn more about green screen keying and tracking and hit
film check out the tutorials linked in the card on screen we'll also need a center point layer
where the two energy beams will meet as well as two more points in the middle these pointers
have been animated to control the movement of the energy beams the downloadable project file
has the keying and tracking already done so you can focus on the fun energy effects
hitfilm comes with a variety of tools for creating some sweet energy effects
let's start with the blue beam add the lighting and electricity effect to a new plane layer
and set the effects blend mode to none so the background plane doesn't appear
disable the built-in glow then attach the effect or attract point layers
reduce the wave scale and twitch scale to make more of a straight beam
i used multiple trunks and branches as well as high animation and speed settings
add to the aggressive and chaotic nature of the effect
you can add more detail to the lightning by applying some distortion effects
i opted for smoke distortion but express users without the add-on can use heat distortion
if you want your distortion effects to work outside of the lighting's original shape
drag in a plane layer and hide it then select that layer as the distortion's
mask an easy way to add even more detail is to use the lightsword ultra glow only effect
available as an express add-on which adds another layer of distorted detail and fills out the effect
color the effect blue using color vibrance or gamma
duplicate the lightning and attach it to the other tracked points
setting the blend to add so it combines with the previous effect
i chose to reduce the branches on the effect towards the center
so it will look better when the rings are added later on
next let's create the yellow energy beam i'll use a duplicate copy of the other one to start with
select the proper tracking points in the lightning effect then reduce the width and increase the
trunks remove all the branches and reduce the animation settings to create a more stable beam
choose a yellow orange color for the lightning core
duplicate this effect and attach it to the other point
if you want the two beams to be tighter together towards the center
use a bulge effect targeting that area
i'll keep a distortion effect to add some detail without breaking up the beam
the light sword glow effect will be much more prominent on this yellow beam
use both the inner and outer glows with low radius settings and the distortion dialed in to add some
thin swirling energy i'll make one glow more red and one more yellow to add some variation
since we've already added the color we don't need the color vibrance effect
you can use a hue saturation effect to tweak the overall color if needed
this wouldn't be a chiang chi inspired effect without the tan rings
the floating rings will be 3d models rendered in hitfilm
i would suggest duplicating the main comp before working with the 3d models as we will
be adding a lot of new layers making it harder to navigate the comp we will later render the
3d models as an image sequence to be brought back into our main comp for further compositing
included in the downloadable project file is a 3d model of a ring you can import the hitfilm
composite shot to bring in the ring model with all of the textures and materials already set up
just copy the model layers into your comp and parent the glow model to the ring
you will still have to add 3d lighting and an environment map to use for reflections
i used an hdri image from polyhaven.com and added colored fractal noise effects on
top to make it look like the metal rings were reflecting the energy
place the rings along the energy beams and parent them to their closest animated points
animate the model's position and rotation values to dial in the movement further
i made my rings match the movement of the energy and also fly in at the beginning of the shot
to add the rings into your actors hands have them hold a ring prop when you film your footage
if a realistic prop ring isn't an option you can create a stand-in prompt using cardboard this
technique was used for our thor hammer tutorial and is extremely useful as it provides a great
reference for tracking the cg ring and shows you what needs to be rotoscoped or cut out using masks
looking at the original footage you can see that we decided to film with no ring prop at all
since we were short on time but we don't recommend this route having done it ourselves
once you are happy with your 3d rings hide all of the other layers and export each set of rings in
their glows as png image sequences with alpha this means we will have four separate image sequences
allowing us to adjust the different rings and glows individually
with the rendered sequences brought into the main comp add some glow effects to enhance the
bright areas of the rings and adjust the per channel intensity controls to color the glow
with these rings now in place you may want to adjust the position
of the energy beams by animating the start points and the lightning effects
our fight scene is currently taking place in an empty void which looks kinda cool but let's
add in a background for the background and the close-up shots i created a digital matte painting
using a couple stock images with a heavy lens blur effect to make the wide shot more dynamic
i added a 3d camera move in hitfilm this was done by placing the main component new comp
making it 3d aligning the camera to that layer and animating the camera however this
3d animation meant that the 2d image background used for the other shots wouldn't look right
typically we like to use unreal engine for a 3d virtual environment but for this project i
decided to use blender i brought over my animated camera from hitfilm into blender using the fbx
camera export feature coming in the next release of hitfilm pro instead of creating a detailed
environment from scratch i used a technique called camera mapping or 3d projection giving a 2d image
3d depth like this is a popular technique and you can find the blender tutorial i learned from
linked in the description i then rendered this 3d scene as a video file to be brought into hitfilm
with the main effects in place it is time to add the final details to tie everything together
to make the initial impact more impactful we can create
a large flash of light with a light flare effect
we can also add some sparks using the quick 3d sparks effect
for my final shot i use the particle simulator to create some fog or smoke adding more detail
and atmosphere you could achieve a similar effect using stock footage elements as well
let's add the final effects on a new grade layer apply a shake effect
then increase the speed and lower the amount to add some high energy movement to the shot
one more glow effect applied over everything can help blend the bright energy effects with
the rest of the scene lens dirt is another great effect to complement the bright effects
making it seem like the energy is interacting with dirt on the camera lens
finally use hitfilm's color correction and grading effects to dial in the brightness contrast and
color of our final shot i ended up using the cine style effect as a quick and easy way to
adjust the colors and add a letterbox green and vignette and that's how you can create your own
10 ring style energy v effects in hit film be sure to check out our other marvel inspired tutorials
feel free to leave a comment with any questions or suggestions and to hit the like button if
you learned something new remember to subscribe for more tutorials like this see you next time