Hi I'm Simon.
This video is all about creating Iron Man's iconic heads up display using nothing other
than HitFilm Express, which is completely free.
When John Favreau and his team started designing the first Iron Man film they ran into the
'superhero face issue'.
Hiding your actors face for extended periods of the film makes it really hard for an audience
to connect.
That's why Spiderman is always pulling his mask off at the first opportunity.
With Iron Man, the solution was actually to magically see inside the helmet which lets
you see Robert Downey Jr's performance and also reinforces how cool the suit is.
This is our starting point.
From here we color correct to give it a warmer look, and then we go seriously hot with some
curves tweaks before applying a tracked mask to darken down everything except her face.
The HUD is created using a mixture of animated elements which are then arranged into the
HUD design that you see in the movies.
A whole bunch of grading is added to make it nice and glowy and then it's composited
back onto the face.
None of this can happen if HitFilm doesn't know what the head is doing, so the first
thing we need to do with a shot like this is track the movement of the face.
There's a bunch of ways to do this, some very complex.
As it turns out though, this shot has a few unique characteristics that makes things a
lot easier.
The face is centralised in the shot and doesn't really move from that position much, even
as the actor moves their head.
This is really unusual - it's not often you get a shot quite as direct and restricted
as this in a movie.
If we can figure out the movement of the front of the face we can then figure out where the
center of the head should be in 3D space.
We can then use point layers with the one in the center of the head set to always look
towards the one that is tracked onto the face movement.
We can then tie our interface elements to that central point and as it looks around
it will automatically move the heads up display in 3D.
Don't worry, I'm going to guide you step by step through exactly how to do this.
It's actually really easy in HitFilm 4 Express and you'll have your own authentic Iron Man
HUD in no time.
First up, make sure you downloaded the project files from the HitFilm Express website.
You can find a link in the description and on the video info card.
If this is the first time you've used HitFilm, you're going to want to start it up and then
open that project file you downloaded.
You'll find the video already on the timeline and ready to go.
Clicking the small white triangles anywhere in HitFilm opens up more options and we want
to open up the video layer and then the tracks section.
To the right of the tracks section, you'll see a plus symbol.
If you can't see it, just drag the divider to the right to make more space.
Clicking this adds a new track to the video.
Tracking can save you a ton of time.
Creating the animation automatically so that you don't have to do it by hand.
On the viewer, you'll see two coloured squares.
The red one tells HitFilm specifically what to look for when tracking, and the green area
defines where it's going to look on each frame.
Click once on the red box.
This will bring up its controls.
You can drag on the corner points to change its shape and size and drag anywhere else
inside the box to move it entirely.
I'm going to place it just here, on the upper arch of Kirstie's eyebrow.
I'll keep the red box nice and small while keeping the green box fairly wide so that
the faster movement of the face doesn't cause any problems.
This will give us enough detail to get a solid track.
We can now track through the shot by clicking the track forward button.
HitFilm will go through the video clip, tracking the movement.
It will take a few seconds to get through the whole clip.
We've also provided a pre-tracked version of the shot in the project file which you
can find in the media panel called Tutorial Tracked.
So you can always double click on that if you want to skip this whole tracking step.
Now that we've tracked the face, we need to do something with that information.
In HitFilm we can use point layers which are invisible and very useful for controlling
your effects.
I'm going to go to the new layer menu on the timeline and create a new point.
I'll choose rename from the menu and call it face track.
Points don't really do anything and won't be visible in your video, but they're really
useful for controlling other layers.
We want to go back to the track panel.
If you can't see it, simply double click the tracker down on the timeline.
You can now select the face track layer from the layer menu in the track panel, and click
apply.
This sends the tracking data over to that new point layer.
Now, switch back to the viewer using the tabs at the top here and then select the face track
layer down on the timeline.
You can see that it's perfectly tracked onto the face.
Anyway, you're probably thinking but Simon - this is only 2D, how can it possibly give
us the information we need to track in 3D?
Well, that's the sneaky bit.
We have our 2D tracked point.
I'm now going to create a second point layer, again from that new layer menu.
I'll rename this one to head pivot.
Currently everything in this scene is 2D.
It's time to change that by switching the head pivot layer into 3D.
This can be done by clicking onto the square on the timeline and switching it to 3D plane.
HitFilm will ask you if you want to add a camera.
Just say yes.
We're now going to position our head pivot in the center of Kirstie's head.
This only needs to be an approximation.
So, if our frame is 1920 pixels wide, which it is, then Kirstie's face is about a third
of that wide.
So lets say about 640 pixels.
A normal human head and Kirstie's, tend to be slightly deeper than they are wide, so
lets say that her head relative to the width of our frame is about 1100 pixels deep.
Therefore if we want our head pivot point to sit neatly in the virtual center of her
head, we need to move it back 550 pixels.
How's that for some maths?
So, select your head pivot layer, then go to the controls panel.
If you open up the transform section, you'll see that the position property has three values.
The third one is the Z position, also known as depth.
You only have this option when you're working in 3D.
So, let’s set that to -550 which will move the point backwards.
Now I'll find a frame where she's looking straight onto camera and move the point horizontally
and vertically to position it between Kirstie's eyebrows.
You can adjust the values in the control panel by clicking and typing a number or by dragging
on the value.
Or even by dragging on the arrows in the viewer.
Now, here comes the really cool bit.
In the head pivot's layer properties section, find the alignment menu and switch it to towards
layer.
This will add an additional option where we can then select the alignment layer.
So, for this you've probably guessed already, we want to choose the face track.
The head pivot is now looking directly towards our tracked eyebrow point.
I'm also going to adjust the rotation just a touch so that the blue arrow is pointing
in the same general direction of Kirstie's eyes.
You'll probably want to tweak all three rotation settings for this.
There's really no need to create a more complex 3D face track than what we've done here.
Now that we've got our track sorted, we can get to work adding our Heads Up display elements.
We've created a whole bunch of these for you and we've even included the source files so
that you can dig in and customise if you want.
We've got a separate video all about designing the HUD, so check that out if you want to
know more.
In the media panel you'll find a folder called HUD.
Inside are three, pre-made videos of HUD elements.
We've also provided you with all the separate pieces of the original designs, so if you
want to try your hand at something more advanced, do check the other video tutorial.
For now, select all three of those videos and drag them down onto the timeline.
We want to switch each of these HUD pieces into 3D using the same method as earlier.
Click the square and then change it to 3D plane.
If you do this while they're all selected, you can switch them all at the same time.
While we're at it, right click on them, go to the blend menu and set it to screen.
This will remove their black backgrounds and make them semi-transparent, mixing them all
together.
We can now parent all of these layers to the head pivot point.
We actually want to flip these layers around so that the writing is reversed, as they should
all be facing Kirstie, not the audience.
An easy way to do this is to use the menu at the top left of the viewer to switch from
the active camera to the top view.
With all the HUD layers still selected on the timeline, we can easily click and drag
on the green square to rotate them all around 180 degrees.
Once you've done that, switch back to the active camera and you'll see that the HUD
is now switched around.
Currently our layers are positioned so that they seem to be stuck directly onto Kirstie's
face, so lets fix that.
Use the blue eye icons to turn off two of the HUD layers so that we can just focus in
on one of them.
Select one of the layers and go to its transform group.
I'm going to right click on position and choose reset.
This sets the position values to 0 which puts the HUD element right on top of our head pivot
point.
From here, I'll now adjust the anchor point, powering it down to somewhere between -1300
and -2500.
The lower the number, the closer it will be to the camera.
I can now use the rotation controls to orbit the HUD element around the head pivot.
The reason this is working is because we changed the anchor point, not the position and so
it's rotating around that anchor point.
This keeps it at the right orbital distance from Kirstie's face even as it's repositioned.
The same techniques can be used for the other two layers.
So, I'll turn visibility back on, go into the layers transform and reset the position,
then adjust the anchor point.
I'll do this one at a different distance so that there's a nice sense of depth to the
HUD.
The rotation controls can be used to position it in a slightly different location.
Now that you've finished doing the main compositing of the HUD, it's time to add some grading
to make it look good.
Move onto our next tutorial to find out how to do that.