it's been 18 years since we last saw keanu reeves playing neo hello everyone i'm zach
and welcome back to another hitfilm tutorial today we'll be creating this streaming code
effect inspired by the trailer for the new matrix film the project files for
this effect are linked in the video description so feel free to download them and follow along
this video footage was filmed outside at night to match the shot in the matrix trailer
if you are shooting your own footage i would recommend not showing the sky or any very bright
area in the clip the coat effect looks best when applied to a dark scene another thing to keep in
mind is the geometry of the scene our footage is pretty simple with flat walls and a road and it's
easier to add the code animation to flat surfaces i'd also recommend keeping the camera locked off
on a tripod to avoid any motion tracking and if you have an actor in your shot place a green
screen behind them to avoid any rotoscoping with the footage brought into hitfilm i added
some color grading to make it darker and a little more blue to look like nighttime if you want to
learn more about how to film and edit dark scenes check out the video linked in the card on screen
the streams of numbers were created using hitfilm's particle simulator
this rendered animation is included for free in the downloadable project file
so you can enter the matrix without having to calculate this heavy simulation to create this
animation i started with a default particle sim i set the shape to quad and the trajectory to cone
and adjusted the settings to make the particles fall down from above frame
i removed the default particle system and instead added a mobile emitter
this allowed each particle to emit its own particles resulting in this trail effect
the particle simulator comes with a built-in texture of numbers which works perfectly for
this kind of effect then adjusted the scale speed particles per second and life of the
mobile emitter and its particle system to dial in the movement and shape of the trails
the mobile emitter color was set to white and the trail particles were set to green i also added
a gradient to their alpha in the lifetime panel to make them quickly fade in and slowly fade out
to make the particles farther away from the camera darker than those closer to the camera
i adjusted the fog settings in the composite shot properties
a stutter effect was applied to make the animation less smooth
i then duplicated the particle sim change the seed to create a different pattern
and shifted it on the timeline by a couple frames this filled in the frame with more particles that
moved at a slightly different time finally i rendered this animation as a video file so i
could work with it much faster and you can find it in the downloadable project files
now that we have our simulation rendered as a video file we can bring it back into hitfilm
to place it in our scene drag the video onto the timeline and make it a 3d plane
reduce the opacity so you can see through it
then adjust the layers rotation position and scale to line it up with the floor in the footage
once it's lined up duplicate the layer and move it to cover the remaining floor
there will be a harsh line where the layer ends and the code graphic is cut off to smooth it out
double-click the rectangle mask tool to add a mask that covers the whole layer then in
the mask properties set the feather to end and increase it now this layer fades in at the edges
i'll duplicate this layer one more time to finish covering the floor now we need more copies of the
code video to cover the walls duplicate the original code layer and adjust its rotation
and position to line up with one of the walls i won't adjust the scale so the size of the
numbers will be consistent you can hide the floor layers for now if they're in the way you can also
go into other 3d views like top view to make sure the walls are lined up with the floor repeat the
process of duplicating and adjusting to cover the walls we don't really need the feathered mask for
the walls since the edges are vertical and any cutting off of the graphic won't be noticeable
i'll place one final duplicate to cover the sky and distant background
make the layer 2d and place it below the other layers scale it to cover the remaining areas then
use a tile effect to repeat the pattern and make the numbers the right size shift each code layer
on the timeline by a different amount so they aren't all the exact same pattern at the same time
select all of the floor layers and make them into their own comp now we can use the freehand mask
tool to draw a shape on the entire floor so it only appears where the floor appears in our video
also make the walls into their own comp and mask it so the walls don't cover the sky
if you see any gaps after masking you can adjust the placement make all of these code
layers into one more composite shot this leaves us with one layer in the main comp that contains
all the code graphics making it much easier to apply a thanks to the entire animation
i'll set the layers blend mode to add then i'll apply some glow effects to boost its brightness
with our code effect created we can now add some final details to finish off the shot
add a new black plain layer placing it above the video footage but below the code comp
reduce its opacity by 5 or 10 so you can barely see through it in the matrix trailer
this darkening effect has a rectangular section cut out of the middle draw a rectangle mask that
covers the entire plane now duplicate the mask set it to subtract and scale it down
the code effect is currently going over top of the person walking this means you will have to
rotoscope the person to cut them out and place them back over top you can create a rough mask
and feather it out to save time but the result will look better with more accurate masking
for my final shot i used mocha hitfilm to greatly speed up the masking process so be sure to check
out the tutorial linked in the card on screen to learn more about rotoscoping with mocha
let's create a green outline effect on our video footage duplicate the footage layer and apply a
find edges effect you can fine tune the results by adding additional effects before defined edges
such as a curves effect to adjust the brightness and a blur effect to smooth it out a little
make the image black and white by applying a hue saturation effect and reducing the saturation
then make it green using a tint effect change the white color to be green and increase the amount
set this layer's blend mode to add i don't want an outline around the
person walking in the shot so i'll add a feathered mask around that area
i'll also add a curves effect before the tint to enhance the line some more
at the moment the shot is quite static so let's add some subtle camera movement
add a new point layer and parent all the other layers to it
our image doesn't cover the whole frame anymore so increase the scale on the point
now we can animate the point's position to create the camera movement
i'll adjust the middle keyframe's control handles to create a smoother movement
the animation is a little too perfect so let's add a new grade layer and apply a shake effect the
default settings are way too much so let's reduce the settings to make the movement more natural
and that's how you can create your own matrix code vfx be sure to check out
our other matrix inspired tutorials hit the like button if you learned
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