Compositing GodSlap’s Megacity in After Effects
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- Опубликовано: 11 сен 2024
- A break down and time-lapse of shot 02 from Godslap Issue 02 animation. Software used - After Effects, Element, Blender and Photoshop.
All composting by Aleksander Sakowski
Background illustrations by Thaw Naing
Character Animation by Simon Crane
This video is not so much a tutorial as it is a breakdown of how I composited this shot in After effects. Here you can watch 8 to 9hrs of work compressed into 4 minutes (that's not including Thaws time illustrating the assets). It goes by quite fast as I didn't want to drag this video out too long, so for all those AE nerds out there, the left window is my main comp and the right window is all the pre-comps, you may pick up on little things watch it through a couple times.
I normally work with 2 or 3 screens so I tried to keep most of my work flow to the central screen, but there are some things I could not include that were off-screen. Feel free to ask any question in the comments with time stamps if you would like to know more about how we achieved certain things. This was the only shot I recorded while working on this project. If there is interest I may record more shots like this for future projects.
This video is not so much a tutorial as it is a breakdown of how I composited this shot in After effects. Here you can watch an 10hr time-lapse compressed into 4 minutes, so it goes by pretty fast (try not to watch both left and right windows at once, try one and a time) Left is Final-Comp, Right is Pre-Comps. Feel free to leave any questions here in the comments if you want to know more about specific things things.
Would you ever post any how-to videos or recommend someone’s channel who does?
@@iwuzabear8241 yeah maybe one day. Next big project we do ill record everything from storyboards to final comp. Check out VideoCopilot they have some great AE tutorials.
@@SakowskiStudios thank you 🙏
Nice as hell to see!!!
youre truly incredible, i wish i had even the tiniest ounce of your talent!
It sucks that one person cant be behind projects like this. Usually takes so much to see things into fruition
Technically one person could do all this but it would take way longer. Its good to diversify your asset production so that your crew members can bring their expertise to various areas of the production and not to overwhelm one person.
@@SakowskiStudios how much does it cost to produce something like this?
This is crazy
Love all the details. How did you go about creating the more atmospheric elements? (smoke/fog/haze)
The fog layers are AE generated solids with a Fractal noise effect (at various scale depending on the distance from camera) and a red hue. The layer is then mask to the desired shape with a large feather. Strength is controlled by its opacity. Normally these layers the go in-between the City assets are only set at 10 - 20 % opacity as these layers stack up into the distance. So when 2 layers are on top of each other the opacity on the back layer will be at %40 then if you stack it again it will be %60 on the next layer. The amount of many haze layers you use dictates how strong to set those haze layers need to be. These setting are all relative of course, some might be stronger some less so.
To digress, This way of making Backgrounds is not so traditional. As normally in a traditional background illustration, the value, contrast and hue of the back-city layers would be baked into the illustration. Using this technique each layer is illustrated at the same hue, value, and contrast'(the distant ones are the same as the foreground ones). It's the haze layers in-between that create the effect of atmospheric haze and lessen the details in the background. This won't work if your back layers are already painted at those desaturated flat values.
Amazing !
Great work
Thanks :)
How was the city scape design and blocking process communicated between team members? The amount of lights added in the blocking and comping process completely transforms the city. Was space intentionally left in the illustration process to take AE added assets into account? Or was this more of flexible approach from the After Effects side to modify their approach based on the final illustrations?
The primitive blocks I designed as shapes, so a block of buildings might have been grouped as a pyramid shape or a flat long rectangle etc, I generated about 6 to 7 block variations 0:07. Thaw took those and arranged the kit bash 3d city assets into those shapes 0:14. He then exported those as isometric stills out to photoshop. I used those greyscale assets in the Layout while Thaw illustrated them which meant that as soon as they were ready, I just had to update the files and the assets would swap out (you can see this at 1:22) Thaw had a lot of other backgrounds to illustrate so detail wise we had to do a simple pass in photoshop then add detail where needed in comp. This let me add detail into focus regions based on the shot and where the camera was rather than just adding detail everywhere in photoshop where you might not see it. This also allows us to focus on which layers were closer to camera, as detail drops of the further back the assets are in space. It's a flexible approach in this case as our resources are limited in terms of hours and man power, so these assets were made like modifiable lego blocks. I could duplicate a Pre-Comp City block, change the text or lights, shift them around and reuse them in the background without it looking like the assets repeat to much.
:o