Hi Guys, welcome to another HitFilm tutorial, where today we are looking at Mysterio’s
blasters from ‘Spider-man: Far From Home’. Little fun-fact before we begin. In the Comics-
Mysterio is a Master of both Visual & Special Effects, so - that means!
One of Us. One of Us. One of Us! Here we are in HitFilm, with my composite
Shot already setup. The very first thing for this effect is to track the motion of my subject.
So I’ll open the dropdown of my footage, and click the plus icon next to Tracker. This
activates the tracking window. In this footage, my hands move back & forth so I’ll be using
double points, focusing on my finger & thumb for stability. Track your footage and once
happy, we’ll create a Point Layer by pressing Control, Alt & P then use F2 to rename this.
Now with that made, I’ll select the layer in my tracking window, along with the values
I’d like to transfer - and as my hand push closer to the camera and therefore look bigger
in size I’m going to keep scale, then hit apply. For more on tracking, check out the
card on screen or link in the description. I have already imported a .png image for my
symbol. I’ll drag this into the timeline & position it into a fitting placement over
my hands, then parent it to one of my Point Layers. To fit with my camera angle I turned
this layer 3D which will give each image a slight offset. I’ll now use some keyframes
to animate it’s entry, focusing on the opacity of the layer, just to have a fade into its
summoning. Going into rotation. Using the Z axis, we’ll
set keyframes for the symbol to spin over the course of the shot - by then selecting
the value then head into the Value Graph to adjust the animation speed, as I’m looking
for something with a burst on impact then steady out. Don’t forget to then activate
that sweet Motion Blur to give the impression of faster speed. When happy, duplicate this
layer, slide on over to the other hand, if you’re using two hands and parent to that
layer. I then reverse the keyframes on this one,
just to avoid looking to in sync. Currently looks like I have a fidget spinner,
so let's change that. For the summoning, apply heat distortion to give the evaporating effect,
keyframing the distortion from maximum strength to subtle, this may vary depending on what
you’re using, this will look like its manifesting out of thin air. Then I threw on a glow & a
heavy diffuse for good measure. I’ll now be turning off my footage for the
remaining effects. Just for a better view. Make two points, set them to 3D & I’ll switch
my camera view to the top camera. I’ll be using these as ends of my beam, I’ll place
them either side to the camera’s field of view and bring them forward in Z Space. We’re
doing it in this method because it’ll just add the impression of going past the camera
and may be more appropriate for your shot if you’re using motion tracking.
Create a New layer, I’ll be naming this one Beam_1, and under Particles & simulation
grab Lightning & electricity. Turn off the glow but bringing down the opacity to 0. Bring
the Wave scale to 0.2 to avoid things going crazy. Under ‘Start’ set it to one of
the hand tracking points or symbols. And ‘End’ to our new Endpoints off frame.
With our placement set, go into the End settings and find ‘Growth’ and we’ll animate
the beam over a few frames to show it is being fired out. Now is the time to customise. Add
more trucks to give it a more of a base and I’d advice removing the branches as these
can look distorted later. Now I got stuck here, our Lighting effect
is limited to a size of 5pts, but Javert had a crafty way around this. We’ll first remove
the BackGround by using a Demult, then invert the alpha matte. Now we’re gonna choke it
by using the Matte Cleaner. In doing it this way, we now have the ability to make it as
large a size as we please. Increase the Smoothness to remove the jagged edges.
We’ll duplicate this Invert effect & place at the bottom of our effects.
Apply a ‘Fill Colour’ from the gradient & fill dropdown & set it to the colour of
our beam. For some texture within the beam, let's apply
a fractal noise from the ‘Generate’ Effects tab, I’ll be using the Solar preset for
this tutorial, then set the fractal noise blend mode to Add. Now to make this look like
energy, we’re going to start off with a basic Heat Distortion, just to break up those
neat lines. So far our beam isn’t looking like it’s
got much movement going on, so under ‘Blurs’ grab Zoom Blur and apply to our beam. This
is going to provide a nice motion blur, giving the impression it’s ‘whooshing’ past
the camera. A positive number directs the blur toward the camera, while a negative,
pushes the blur into the centre frame. Finally, I’m going to add a subtle diffuse
and bring out more of the shadows & layers by applying Curves.
Now we have the beam core, let's move on to the small debris, for which we’ll be using
a Particle Simulator from the Particle & Simulation Dropdown.
No need to create a layer as this effect generates it’s own.
First, attach the emitter to the layer you’re tracking to then by using the blue circle
guide as a reference, adjust scale & radius till the Emitter is roughly as big as your
magical symbol. Move into the Particle System dropdown & we’ll
start in the General settings first. If you’re working on a burst, like in this
scene, then have the particles per second have a sudden increase before slowing down
to a steady stream. Set a keyframe for the beginning of your particle system with a rise
in particles on activation, then allow it to slow down to over the course of the shot.
Open the Movement dropdown and I’m going to adjust the Particle Scale & Speed to be
subtle in my scene, then in the dropdown below I’ll add some variety. By altering these
values we can create a less uniform particle system.
Right now these particles are just emitting and going everywhere, we need to apply a force
in order to direct them. Add a force by selecting the green plus symbol beside Force. With our
beam, we’ll keep the type directional, increase the strength level & I’m going to use the
dials to rotate the force in the same direction as my beam. Adjust these settings so you have
something that's fitting with your Mysterio mist beam. Mysterio mist, that has a ring
to it. To keep things simple, I’ll use a tint to
match it to the color of my symbol and then apply a Glow and another Zoom Blur, in order
for it to be consistent with the design of the beam.
Now with all that set on one side, duplicate each of the layers and adjust the parents
to the opposite hand, if you’re using both hands, or you’re an octopus and have eight.
With the effect set, all we need to do is the main compositing, you could go into each
layer- but I would like to adjust the effect as a whole. To do this I’ll get my footage
and make a new Composite shot from it, then I'll drag the old composite into this a layer.
Now, I can go into the layer values and set the blend of the entire effect. For additional
touches, I’m also adding a Glow for some intensity, adjusting the color with a Hue
shift to look more like the one used in the film, followed by a Gleam.
The last thing to tie this together with my footage is a small flicker on the subject's
body, we have made something that emits some form light so we need to take that into consideration.
To do this go the New Layer icon & select New Grade Layer, calling this Flicker with
this selected, mask around your subject, go into the Fill & Gradient dropdown in the effects
window & apply a Fill Color. Matching it to the color of the illusion. Don’t forget
to then feather your mask, like I did. Under Grunge, you will find Flicker, this
we’ll use this to simplify the light animation. Adjust the Frequency & Amplitude to match
of your beam’s speed and power. Then, by going into the layer properties we can set
this to a subtle blending option then dial down my opacity. Now you’ll have a green
flicker of light over the subject. As you may have guessed by looking at my footage,
the camera motion I applied was faked, this was done by animating the scale of my footage,
and creating a Grade Layer with a Shake from the Grunge effects. This helped build up what
could have been a rather flat shot. And then that’s it, once done send on for
a good old grading. You are now the Master of Illusion!
Thanks for watching, if you have any questions please leave them in the comment section down
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