Today we welcome back Tobias from Surfaced Studio. He's got a sketch he'd like to show
you for this effect so I'll let him take it away.
Hey guys and welcome to another very exciting HitFilm Express tutorial.
In this video I really want to show you the 3D: Particles add-on pack for HitFilm Express.
The add-on pack includes the Particles Simulator which allows you to create some really exciting
effects for fire, smoke, energies or the really cool Killer Frost Effect that Walter used
to kill my tea. This is going to be an intermediate tutorial
and I will assume that yoa are pretty comfortable using HitFIlm Express... if you're just getting
started there's tons of beginner tutorials on this channel that you can go and check
out.
But now, before I talk your face off.. let's jump right into it!
Welcome to the exciting world of HitFilm Express! As you can see I have the 3D: Particles Add-On
pack enabled that you can get from the HitFilm store and you will need this pack to follow
along - or use HitFilm Pro.
But now let's get into it and create a new Project.
Set the template to 1080p Full HD at 24 FPS and then hit Start Editing.
Let's bring the clip for this tutorial into our project. It is called Frost Effect.mp4
and you will find a download link for this file in the video description below. Once
imported, right click onto the clip and select to Make Composite Shot. I am going to call
this one 'Frost Effect Comp' and then hit OK.
This clip is a simple shot of Walter taking aim at my tea to turn it from steaming hot
deliciousness into a lump of frozen flavoured water.
First, because I want the particles for the frost effect to be emitted from Walter's moving
hand, we need to extract the hand from the base footage. For that, duplicate the base
layer and let's call this one 'Hand Roto'.
With the Hand Roto layer selected, use the pen tool to draw a mask around Walter's hand.
No need to get super detailed, but I do want a fairly tight fit to not include some of
the highlights and reflections on the pantry door. Now expand the Mask properties and under
Transform, enable keyframes for the Path property. Then move through your footage and adjust
the Mask path to follow Walter's hand throughout the entire shot.
Cool, I think that's good enough. Let's disable the visibility of the base layer and get this
hand properly extracted. For that, search for and apply a Color Difference Key to the
Hand Roto layer.
Over in the controls tab, open up the effect properties and let's change the Screen Color
over to Red. Bring up the Min to about .9 and then drop the max so it'll flip... to
maybe about .8. I might bring the Gamma up by just a bit to remove a bit more of the
background around the hand.
Next, let's clean this up a bit and what beffer effect to use than the Matte Cleaner. In the
effect settings for the matte cleaner, let's bring up the Smooth to maybe around 10 and
check this out... yup, I think that's good enough to work as a source for our frost particles.
Great, we now need to pre-compose this Hand Roto layer and all of the masks and effects
so, right click on the layer and select to Make Composite Shot. I will call this layer
Hand Roto Comp, make sure you Move all masks and effects WITH this layer and then hit OK.
Let's return to our Frost Effect Compositition, re-enable the base footage and let's finally
add some particles!
With the 3D Particles Add-On pack installed, under the Particles & Simulation tab, you
will find the Particle Simulator. This, in itself is a layer, so in order to add some
particles into your shot, simply drag and drop this effect directly into your layer
window I will call this new layer Frost Particles and if we scrub through...
By default, the Particle Simulator will spawn these round white particles in the center
of the screen. That's extremely exciting, but not really what we are after so let's
start customising this particle effect.
With the Frost Particles Layer selected, in the Controls tab you will find a tab for Emitters.
Emitters are the sources for your particles and if you pop this open you will see that
there is already an Emitter on this layer. Open up the Emitter properties and let's first
make the particles emit from Walter's hand rather than just being spawned in the centre
of the screen.
For that, simply change the Shape of this emitter from Point to Layer. Open up the Shape
properties and now for the Source Layer select our Hand Roto Comp. The particles are now
all coloured according to this layer, but they are still emmitting from everywhere.
In order to constrain them to be emitted only from the hand that we extracted, enable the
Use Laer Alpha option in the Shape properties.
NOW we're getting somewhere. The particles are now emitting from Walter's moving hand
- which is very cool! Let's make them shoot towards my cup. For
that, we can set the Trajectory of the particles from Random to Target. Open up the Trajectory
properties and we now need to define the Position the particles will fly towards.
Since I know we will need to use the position of the Tea Cup a few more times for this effect,
let's track a Point object to its position. You can use the 2D Motion Tracker if you want
to, but it's a bit overkill for what we're after so I am simply going to create a new
Point layer, call it 'Cup Target' and then move it to the position of the cup. Next,
enable keyframes for the Position property and scrub through you composition and re-position
the Cup Target so it follows the cup in my hand.
Now let's go back to the beginning of the Composite Shot, right click on the Position
property of our cup target and select to Copy. Let's dig up the Position for our particle
Trajectory Target, right click and Paste the keyframes here. Now the particles are flying
towards the cup in my hand!
But they don't move fast enough to ever get there and they seem to spawn way too early!
So first, let's have them start at the moment when Walter angrily points his hand at me.
In the effect settings, within each Emitter can have multiple Particle Systems. If you
expand this tab you will see that our Emitter has a Particle System in it and here you can
customise the behaviour, look and feel of all your particles.
Open up the General tab and let's animate the Particles per Second property from 0 to
maybe 1000 at the moment Walter's arm is fully extended. This will make the particles spawn
at the correct time! Then, open up the Movement tab and let's jack
the speed of these particles up to 1200!
Let's check this out and nice! Still a long way to frost effect, but you can start to
see the effect we are trying to build!
Let's tweak the look of our particles a little bit. For that, open up the Appearance tab
in the Particle System settings and in here you can make your particles look any way you
want! Let's change the Texture Source to In-Built and now under the Texture settings... the
3D Particles Add On includes a whole bunch of nice presets... the one I kinda liked for
the Frost Effect is the Aurora Borealis.
I also want the particles to look in the direction they are moving, so let's enable the Align
to Motion option as well. That's a big BLOB of particles so let's tweak their size a little
bit.
In the Movement tab, you will find an option for Scale and let's bring this down to round
about maybe 20. Now that looks more like a swarm of hornets, so let's come back to the
Appearance and change the Blend mode over to Add to create more of an energy effect
look.
To make the particles look a little bit more natural and not so uniform, you can add variation
to both the Appearance and the Movement of your particles. Let's open up the Movement
Variation properties and I will set the Life variation to .5 of a second, the scale to
around 40% and the speed variation to maybe 200.
Let's check this out and...yeah, we're getting closer.
Next, let's look at how you can control the color, transparency and other aspects of your
particles over the course of their short life and for that, you use the Lifetime Panel.
You can bring this panel up by going up to the main menu, click on this little grid icon
here and enabling the Lifetime panel. Let me bring this in a little bit so it's a little
bit easier to see.
In this panel you will find all of the properties that you can animate and control over the
life of a particle. If this panel appears blank for you, make sure you have a property
within your Particle System selected and let's first manage the color. So, select the Color
in the Lifetime Panel and at the bottom, change the Type from Off to Gradient.
This will enable a gradient editor and you can click just below this line to add new
keyframes, customise the colour and, in order to remove a keyframe, simply drag the little
tag off to the side.
I am going to add a few keyframes to have my particles start out with a very bright
blue and then transition slowly over to a slightly darker, more saturated blue towards
the end of their life. Finally, let's set the Mix with Appearance from Off to 'First
Keyframe' and if this does nothing at all, bring in your first keyframe to the right
little bit... and you can see that the particles now start out with their original colour - taken
from Walter's hand and then transition into this nice frosty blue!
Next, let's control the transparency and make this effect a little less... thick. Select
the Alpha option, change the type over to Gradient and let's add a few keyrames and
bring down the overall opacity. I am going to start out very bright, then transition
over to a semi-transparent particle and slowly fade out towards the end of their life.
Finally, enable the motion blur switch for this layer and let's check this out... yeah,
I think that's looking pretty cool!
Finally, let's make the particles actually 'hit' the coffee cup and bounce off!
Let's close down the Lifetime panel and on the Frost Particles layer - which is our Particle
Simulator - you will find a place to add both Deflectors and forces to your particle systems.
Since we want the particles to hit - deflect off - the tea cup, let's ad a Deflector by
clicking on the little plus icon over on the right hand side here.
Open up the Deflector properties and expand the Shape tab. Again, we want this deflector
to follow the movement of the cup and for that, again, make sure you are at the beginning
of your Composite shot and then copy and paste the Position from our Cup Target point layer
over to the Position of the Deflector.
Next, let's change the shape a little bit and I will disable the lock for uniform scaling
and then set the scale to something like 20 x 200 x 200. I think I will also rotate the
Deflector slightly, maybe 5 degrees in Z to aim it a little bit downards... let's check
this out... and that is working pretty nicely!
Also, just FYI, if you don't like that the particle beam effect is a little bit off target,
that is caused by the time delay they take to travel to reach the cup and you can compensate
for that by pulling forward the Trajectory Target keyframes on the Frost Particles so
they aim at where the cup WILL be rather than at where the cup is RIGHT NOW. Cool, I think
that works a bit better.
Now I don't like that the particles are appearing OVER Walter's hand here so let's fix that
up. Simply drag the Hand Roto Comp layer on top
of the Frost Particles... and voila, that's it! But, let's make this a tad cooler and
add a bit of a glow to the hand as well so let's apply a Glow effect to the Hand Roto
layer.
In the effct settings, let's change the Blend mode over to Add and then adjust the Threshold
and Intensity to create something like a glow coming from the inside of the Hand. You can
also tweak the Per Channel Intensity to give the effect a little bit more Blue and Greenish
tint so just make it work for you.
Finally, animate the intensity to fade this effect in just as the particles start emitting
from Walter's hand! Awesome, that looks really nice!
Next, let's add some impact particles that emit from around the cup so it looks like
the particles are exploding where the Frost Beam is hitting me. For that, let's drop another
Particle Simulator effect into our Composite Shot and let's call this one 'Impact Particles'.
In the effect controls, under the Emitter, change the shape from Point over to Circle,
open up the Shape properties and now change the Attach to Layer property to our Cup Target.
This will make the emitter automatically follow the movement of the cup!
Next, within the settings for the Particle System, animate the Particles Per Second from
0 to around 300 just as the frost beam starts to hit. Wow, ok, we have an impact! But, to
make this look a little bit more realistic, let's add some Gravity so the particles actually
fall down like rather than floating off into space.
In order to do that, on the Impact Particles Layer, let's add a Force by clicking on the
little plus icon right next to the Forces option. Open up the Force settings and in
here... we won't change anything at all since this is all already nicely set up to add gravity.
Just know that you can tweak all sorts of cool stuff here to control how your particles
are affected by this Force.
Right now, since our particles seem to be more drooping down rather than exploding and
then falling down, let's come into the Movement settings for our Particle System and give
them a bit more Speed, maybe around 400. Yup, that looks a little nicer.
Now let's make the particles look a little bit more interesting and feel free to cusomise
this to your liking. In the Appearance tab, I will set my Texture Source to In-BUild and
then select the Shockwave Plasma Trail option as my Texture. Enable Align to Motion and
change the Blend mode to Add and... right now that's a bit too intense for me to handle
so...
Let's hop back over to the Movement tab and bring the size of the particles down to around
20. To add some variation under Movement Variation I am going to add .5 for Life, 40% for scale
and 200 for Speed variation across the individual particles. Finally, I might also come into
the Appearance Variation and add a bit of Colour variance of maybe 15 or so.
Let's check this out. Cool, I think that will work. Let's bring the Lifetime panel back
up and start tweaking the color and Alpha for these particles over the course of their
lives.
I am doing nothing new in here, I will simply have their colour fade from bright to dark
blue and fade them out towards the end of their lifespan just like we did with the Frost
Particles.
Once you're done, lose down the Lifetime panel, be sure to enable the motion blur switch on
the layer and let's check this out... yup, almost there. To add a bit more detail to
this effect, let's have the particles bonce of the kitchen counter.
For that, let's add a new Deflector to the Impact Particles Layer and let's move this
one down to the kitchen counter. In the Deflector properties, in the Shape tab you will find
a Scale setting and let's disable the uniform scale lock. Then set the Scale to something
like 500 x 100 x 300. And now if you play this back... you will have the particles bounce
on the kitchen counter, that's really cool!
The last 2 touches I want to add to this effect are a lens flare and a bit of a reflection
of the frost effect to the kitchen counter.
For the flare, simply create a new Plane layer, I am going to call this one 'Flare' - make
sure the layer color is set to black and then apply a Light Flares Effect to it.
Change the blend mode of the layer over to Screen and then in the effect settings I am
going to change my Flare Type fo Digital Blocks, but feel free to chose whichever flare you
fancy. Then pop open the HotSpot Position, change the Center to 0,0 - which will place
the Flare in the center of the screen, but then change the Use Layer option to our Cup
Target. This will make the flare automatically follow the Cup in my hand!
Now animate the intensity to come in with the Frost particles beam hitting the cup!
Nice!
Finally, for the reflection on the kitchen counter!
Select the Frost Particles and the Hand Roto layer and pre-compse them. I will call this
one 'Frost Particles Comp' and then hit OK. Return to our main composition and now duplicate
thie Frost Particles Comp layer.
Let's call this copy 'Reflections' and position it so that the beam itself is over the kitchen
counter where you'd expect the reflections of the beam to appear.
Then create a new Plane Layer, let's call this one 'Reflections Matte' and then hit
OK. Disable its visibility but with it still selected use the Pen tool to draw around the
surface of the kitchen counter. Re-enable its visibility (which is actually very important)
and then pre-compose this layer. Let's call this one 'Reflection Matte Comp' and be sure
to move all Masks and Effects with the layer.
Return to the Frost Effect Composite Shot, disable the visibility on the Reflections
Matte Comp as we don''t need to see it any more and let's apply a Set Matte effect to
the Reflections layer.
Open up the effect settings and change the Source Layer from None over to our Reflections
Matte Comp. Because this will look rather awful, change the Blend option from Replace
to Subtract and then enable the Invert option!
Nice, we now have the reflection confined to the surface of the kitchen counter top.
Let's just blend it in a little nicer and for that, let's first add a Blur effect to
the Reflections layer. Be sure to place the Blur effect BEFORE the Set Matte effect though
or you will get the blur bleeding over the edges. In the effect settings, increase the
Blue Radius to around 20 and, let's also bring down the opacity of this layer to round about
30. Finally, let's change the blend mode of this layer over to Add and check this out...
we now have some really nice reflections on the kitchen counter.
So now, at last, zoom back out and make some space so we can see our completed shot. Then
rewind, unselect everything and let's play back our final Frost Particles effect.
And that is all there is to it! If you enjoyed this tutorial don't forget
to like and subscribe. My name is Tobias from Surfaced Studio, thank
you very much for watching and until next time, I will see you later!