hello everyone i'm zach and welcome back to another hitfilm tutorial today i'll be
sharing some useful hitfilm techniques that you may not have known about these techniques
can be applied to all sorts of projects so let's get right into it have you ever wanted
to adjust the controls in one composite shot while seeing the change in another
well you can just click this handy pin icon to lock the controls panel
now you can go into another comp and can still adjust that original comps controls cool
you may have heard about using the value graph to fine-tune your hitfilm animations but there's
another way to control them even further i want this circle to move along this square so i'll
animate its position after getting around the first corner hitfilm will start smoothing out
the animation this smooth animation is perfect for something like a spaceship but it doesn't
really work for this specific square animation you can select a keyframe and adjust its handles
in the viewer to fine-tune the animation this also works in 3d space another option is to
adjust the keyframe spatial interpolation the auto setting is the default and manual is when
we change the curve ourselves linear is what we want in this case where the animation goes
straight from one position to the next without adding any smoothing or interpolation in between
a common approach to removing green screen and hitfilm is to mask out any unwanted
areas and apply a single keying effect to remove the green this is great if you just
need a quick key with just a little more work you can achieve a much higher quality result
even the smoothest of green screens requires adjusting the settings a little pushing these
values too far can lose fine edge details like hair instead of trying to remove everything with
one effect try using multiple keying effects apply your keyer of choice to a grade layer
then mask that grade layer to the useful area in this case i'm using the chroma key effect in
hitfilm pro but this technique also applies to the keying effects available in hitfilm express
the layout panel is an extremely useful part of hitfilm that doesn't get much attention
if you don't see the layout panel you can activate it from the window menu at the top of the screen
the layout panel can be used to easily center layers or snap them to the corners or edges of
the frame it can adjust the size of layers and you can choose where to scale from this makes it
very easy to scale from the corner or one edge instead of adjusting the layer's anchor point
you can even select multiple layers and distribute them evenly or adjust them all together
check out the tutorial linked in the card on screen to learn more about the layout panel
if you do a lot of color grading or vfx you should try setting your color bit depth to 16 bit float
you can change your color bit depth in the project settings this option requires an add-on if you're
in hitfilm express using 16-bit float gives you a lot more color data to work with this
can give you smoother color gradients and glows and gives you more freedom while color grading
for example i've applied a glow effect to this image which is clipping the highlights to white
without 16 bit enabled darkening the image afterwards results in this gross gray color
with 16 bit enabled i can darken this image after the glow and it works as expected nice
a vignette is a common effect that draws attention to the center of the frame by darkening the
corners however the default vignette effect darkens the highlights to gray which doesn't
look the greatest to fix this you can apply the same vignette effect to a white plain layer
add an invert effect then a d malt to cut out the middle then add another invert effect to
make it the right color again now you can set the layer's blend mode to soft light this still
has the effect of darkening in the corners but it doesn't flatten out those highlights
cool you can also use a similar technique to soften the edges of the frame in addition to
darkening them in a separate composite shot i have this plain layer with a mask
but you can also use the same vignette technique applying a lens blur effect and
using that comp as the source layer creates a blur around the edges i find this effect
most useful for fully cg shots like this title sequence or when i'm doing a green screen shot
masking out a moving subject can be very time consuming instead of rotoscoping frame by frame
you can utilize motion tracking to speed up the process use hitfilm's motion tracking features
to track the movement then apply that tracking data to a point layer add a new plane layer and
draw your mask shape try to do a better job than i did here parent the plane layer to the track point
and your mask will now follow the tracked movement you can now animate the mask path
over time to refine the shape with less keyframes required to account for all the subtle movement
once you are happy with your mask make the plain layer and point into their own comp
then use a set matte effect sourcing that comp to apply the mask if you have any hitfilm techniques
or tips of your own be sure to share them in the comments below hit the like button if you
learned something new and remember to subscribe for more hitfilm tutorials see you next time