hello everyone i'm zach and welcome back to another hitfilm tutorial
keeping with this month's halloween theme we'll be looking at how to turn yourself
into the headless horseman using hitfilm and blender we're currently running a halloween
short film competition with lots of great prizes the due date is october 24th so you still have
some time to enter click the card on screen for more info along with this competition we
also launched a discord channel where you can talk to other hitfilm users get feedback on
your projects and join our growing community of talented filmmakers and content creators
a link to join the discord can be found in the video description see you there
we filmed our footage in front of a green screen so we could swap out the background
for a digital environment a practical orange light was used to represent the flickering
light of the fire and other lighting was used to match the moonlit environment
tracking markers were placed throughout the scene so we could track the camera movement
we also placed tracking markers on tom's face to help track the 3d model pumpkin in blender
but you can manually animate the 3d model instead of tracking it if you are new to
blender i'd recommend checking out our blender to hitfilm masterclass
because the camera is moving in our shots we first have to do a 3d camera track i tracked
the camera in blender but you could also use the foundry camera tracker and hitfilm pro and export
the camera to blender as an fbx file you can find our detailed tutorial on foundry's camera tracker
linked in the card on screen as well as a blender camera tracking tutorial linked in the description
we need to track the motion of the actor's head so the pumpkin moves correctly the track doesn't
have to be perfectly accurate as the original head will be removed and the pumpkin will appear to be
floating for the final shot i did a blender object track for the last half of the shot where the
tracking worked well i then applied that tracking data to a 3d object i'd recommend this free head
model from blendswap.com the track went a little wonky towards the beginning where there wasn't
enough tracking data so i converted the track into keyframe animation and deleted those bad keyframes
i then manually animated the head model for the rest of the shot
if you're interested in a more detailed look at head tracking and blender be sure
to check out our justice league cyborg tutorial linked in the card on screen
it is now time to replace our actor's head with a jack-o-lantern this 3d model is
free to download from sketchfab.com link in the description import the gltf 3d model into blender
the file comes in with a hierarchy of empty objects parented to one another
so to make things simpler i'll delete all those objects leaving just the pumpkin and stem
i'll also join those two objects into one enable material preview to see the textures on the model
place this pumpkin model so it lines up with the tracked head model then pairing it to the head
i chose to make the model higher resolution by adding a subdivision surface modifier the details
on the pumpkin's face appear to be sticking out instead of in so go over to the shading tab add
an rgb curves node before the normal map node then invert the green channel by adjusting the curve
now the normal map detail renders correctly i also want the jack-o'-lantern's face to glow
very brightly so i'll increase the material's emission strength we now need to match the
lighting of our 3d scene to the lighting of our video footage enable scene lights and scene world
to see our own lighting instead of the defaults also enable transparent in the film settings
then go to rendered view for this project i rendered using the eevee render engine so we
can preview the render in real time i'll start by adding area lights and adjusting their position
rotation color power and size to match the lights we filmed with on set
to add some additional lighting and reflections we can use an hdri
i downloaded an hdri from polyhaven.com that generally match the digital environment created
in unreal engine in the world properties select that hdri is the environment texture
then in the shading tab adjust the strength value to control the brightness
for the final render make sure to enable motion blur render a test image by going to render render
image and make sure everything looks good and that no other objects are visible in the render
create a folder for the image sequence then render the animation as an rgba png sequence
it is now time to turn our actor into the headless horseman by replacing their head
with the pumpkin be rendered out of blender import the rendered image sequence into hitfilm
then drag it into a composite shot above your actor layer we can still see some of
our actors head appearing behind the pumpkin so i'll draw a freehand mask around tom's head
since i already have a mask on this layer i can set this new mask to subtract so it cuts out of
the footage make sure to enable keyframing for the mask path then go through the whole shot
animating the mask to continue cutting off your actor's head
you may want to switch between multiple masks if the shape changes a lot throughout the shot
now it looks like the pumpkin has replaced tom's head depending on your camera angle
and your actor's costume you may still see the actor's neck like we do here if that is the case
you'll first have to rotoscope that area i used mocha hitfilm to speed up the roto process
and you can learn more about rotoscoping with mocha in the tutorial linked in the card on screen
a quick and easy way to hide your actor's neck is to use that rotoscope mask on a black plane
instead of making the plane pure black try sampling a dark color from your video then add
a grain effect to match the noise in your footage if you are interested in a more detailed removal
check out our invisibility tutorial and our headless ghost tutorial linked in the description
let's set this jack-o-lantern on a fire using hitfilm's particle simulator
the fire should stick to the pumpkins we first need to export our 3d animation out of blender
you'll need to install the blender to hitfilm exporter script linked in
the video description select the animated head model and export it to a hitfilm composite shot
then select the pumpkin go to the last frame in the shot and export it as an obj file
back in hitfilm import the composite shot from blender this will bring in the animated
camera and a 3d point representing the animated head then import the obj model
uncheck center anchor points and auto normalize scale then hit ok
open the model layer's properties go to the last frame
and parent the pumpkin model to the animated point layer
we now have our pumpkin head animation in hitfilm
drag a new particle simulator onto the timeline attach the emitter to the 3d point layer
then adjust its position to place it over one of the eyes
set the trajectory to comb then adjust the rotation so the particles fly outwards from
the face add a new force and adjust its rotation and strength to make the particles move upwards
choose one of the fire textures for the appearance and set the blend mode to add
in the lifetime panel set the alpha to gradient
then add points on the gradient to make the particles fade in and out
reduce the life scale and speed of the particles then add some variation
increase the particles per second to fill out the effect
also add some variation to the texture angle
when you are happy with this emitter duplicate it and move it to the other eye
then change the seed on the particle system so it isn't an exact copy
to make the particles be properly occluded by the pumpkin set the particle's depth
source layer to the 3d model be sure to enable motion blur for this layer as well
we can enhance this particle sim and make it look more realistic by applying some additional effects
to give the fire a more fluid like motion i applied some heat distortion effects
one effect added some large distortion and the other one added some smaller details
to make these particles look like fire add a color vibrance effect and use the flames preset
you can also tweak the brightness and color with additional color correction effects
to better blend the fire with the rest of the shot so that there's blend mode to add
the glowing face of the jack-o-lantern is too dark compared to the fire so let's brighten
it up with a super glow effect adjust the threshold so only the bright face is glowing
then give it an orange tint to match the fire
we now have our actor's head removed and replaced with the flaming jack-o-lantern let's look at how
to tie everything together and create a more moody and spooky atmosphere we can totally change the
mood of this shot with some color grading i used a curves effect to darken the whole image which
makes a big difference already i then took some red out of the shadows and added more blue and
a little more green this color adjustment makes the shot look more like night time instead of day
a hue saturation effect was applied to lower the overall saturation
as well as reduce the saturation of the reds even more to help the fire fit into the scene better
finally various lens effects were applied to tie everything together and make the shot seem like it
was filmed with a real camera and that's how you can create your own headless horseman v effects
be sure to check out our other halloween themed tutorials and to submit your entry
to our halloween competition by october 24th join our discord to chat with us in
the community get feedback on your projects and more leave a comment and hit the like button if
you learned something new remember to subscribe for more tutorials like this see you next time