Homemade Star Wars Effects

OK that made my day :) Old school SD chasing the Falcon... Does it get better?

The only "improvement" IMHO would be the addition of some motion blur. not a lot, but I think it would add to the "realism". Often digital make images that are "too clean". But as essentially a first attempt you knocked it out of the park...

VERY sorry to hear about your Mom... My Father passed from cancer rapidly a few years back... OK to gone in a few months. I feel your pain.

Jedi Dade
 
VERY sorry to hear about your Mom... My Father passed from cancer rapidly a few years back... OK to gone in a few months. I feel your pain.

Jedi Dade

Thank you, Jedi Dade.

I'm glad you liked it, and I appreciate the awesome comments. Sometimes the best way of learning is in listening to your audience. I am curious about the motion blur. The Death Star Surface was the only CG element, and I added a lot of blur to its motion (see stills above). In the interest of learning––and the very real possibility that in the process of putting this together, I have looked at it so many times I may have overlooked some things––what areas need the motion blur?

Thanks again for your comments.

And thanks to everyone who has seen it. Even though it is very short, and doesn't seem like much, such a lot of work goes into each shot. It makes me appreciate it even more when I see the "armies" of artists from several effects companies listed in the credits of a single big budget movie. I'm getting a very small taste, and a much better idea of what they go through.
 
The motion blur in the model shots for the OT was accomplished by slowing the shutter speed - not sure what the photo term is for it ... "f-stop" maybe - anyway it allowed the image of the model to blur slightliy in "streaks" to give the impression of greater speed. Motion blur is probably not the right technical term either. But if you fire up a copy of ROTJ and freeze frame the shots you'll see it right away... almost nothing is perfect "sharp" image Its all got a slight smudging to it. Here's an example... NOTHING in this shot is "clear".
Motion Blur.jpg
Jedi Dade
 
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May I ask, when ships are filmed in front of blue/green-screen, isn't motion blur making the compositing work much more difficult? I always thought that works only when the edge between model and greenscreen is sharp...

From what I saw, the sequences for ROTJ which were done with "go motion" were all shot in front of the right background (AT-ST in a forest miniature etc.), to avoid this problem.

But I'm not an expert, and would appreciate if someone can tell how it works with motion blur. Would like to do a similar project, too, it was very inspiring!

Cheers,
Thorsten
 
The motion blur in the model shots for the OT was accomplished by slowing the shutter speed - not sure what the photo term is for it ... "f-stop" maybe - anyway it allowed the image of the model to blur slightliy in "streaks" to give the impression of greater speed. Motion blur is probably not the right technical term either. But if you fire up a copy of ROTJ and freeze frame the shots you'll see it right away... almost nothing is perfect "sharp" image Its all got a slight smudging to it. Here's an example... NOTHING in this shot is "clear".
View attachment 338535
Jedi Dade

AH, I see what you mean now. Thanks for the explanation, that helps!
 
May I ask, when ships are filmed in front of blue/green-screen, isn't motion blur making the compositing work much more difficult? I always thought that works only when the edge between model and greenscreen is sharp...

From what I saw, the sequences for ROTJ which were done with "go motion" were all shot in front of the right background (AT-ST in a forest miniature etc.), to avoid this problem.

But I'm not an expert, and would appreciate if someone can tell how it works with motion blur. Would like to do a similar project, too, it was very inspiring!

Cheers,
Thorsten

I'm glad you were also inspired to try this, as some others were! It is a LOT of fun.

It is also a hard program to learn. It can be very intimidating at first, but, like all things, if you keep at it and get to know all the tools, you won't believe what you can accomplish.

The motion blur against green screen is not that big a problem. It's a process called 'keying'. In After Effects there are so many adjustments that can be made to eliminate the green that you can't go wrong no matter what your shots look like. I didn't know many of these adjustments in my earliest shots in this project, and I did run into some trouble, but the last shot I did was a breeze. For example:

The X-wing coming at you down the trench was an early shot. I didn't know about all the adjustments in keying yet. As a result, there is some 'shimmying' on the edge of the upper port side engine. However, I kept the shot as is, even though I learned later how to do it better. Why, because if you look carefully at the raw green screen shot in the behind–the–scenes footage, you will see that the model sits on a plexiglass stand. Parts of that stand are actually in front of the model's lower engines. Before I learned all the ins and outs of keying, I learned how to eliminate the stand from the model in the composite shot. I also added small parts of the model that are missing in real life, Much work went into that, so much that it wasn't worth starting over.

The last shot I did was my favorite; the shot of the Falcon... side view flying just above the trench. Whereas I used to spend hours trying to get the keying right in early shots, this one was quick and easy. It freed me up to concentrate more on smooth motions between Faclon and Death Star. This is also a prime example of what Jedi Dade was saying about adding more motion blur, in fact, it is a great example because when I shot the falcon model it was stationary and the camera was locked down on the tripod. All I did was slowly turn the model on its stand to match the motion of the Death Star POV. The 'extra' motions of the Falcon zooming away from the camera were done in After Effects. Because the model was not actually zooming away when I shot it, I should have given it some blurring.

I should add here that neither the Falcon nor X-wing models have lights in the engines. The engine glow had to be added in 'post production'. I was so excited when I learned how to do that. My favorite shot was the closeup of the Falcon. When I did this I realized I could use this same technique if I ever shoot something that involves lightsabers.

I know this was a long explanation, but I hope this helps! I have only been learning After Effects since March. I made this 'homemade' Star Wars in 3 weeks, after 2 weeks of learning. I've learned SO MUCH more since this piece, but doing it actually accelerated my learning because it forced me to discover the various issues that can come up, and solve them quicker.
 
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I am currently in the process of creating another project as a learning experience. It is not Star Wars related, but involves some tricky––and very cool–– effects. I'll post a link to that one when it is done.
 
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Motion blur is natural photographic phenomenon, and occurs whenever an object (and/or the camera) is in motion as the shutter is opened to expose a frame of film. In digital cameras, this setting is affected by the shutter speed, in a fashion similar to film (slower shutter speeds result in more blur). Lens f-stops will also affect the recorded blur, as will frame exposure times. Since we are so used to seeing motion blur, when it is missing, the footage typically looks artificial or "wrong" (technical term). Stop motion is a classic example of the problem, but so is quite a bit of early CG work. In film and when shooting existing objects, motion blur comes for free. In CG, motion blur can be very expensive in terms of calculation time, especially when combined with other rendering methods such as global illumination. Pixar's Renderman would often produce motion blur with very little time penalty when it was first introduced; however, as Renderman has been upgraded over the years to offer raytracing and global illumination, it has gradually lost the ability to produce motion blur without the time hits suffered by other rendering engines.

When filming people or objects against a process screen, such as green or blue, motion blur quality is affected, and is definitely an added challenge to produce a good matte extraction, as the color of the screen will bleed into the blur. This can produce a hard edge to the blur than it would naturally have, but fortunately there are some great tools out there to help with this. Rotoscoping motion blur is also a real challenge, and requires a skilled artist to really make it work.

Note that higher frame rates produce less motion blur, and could result in the audience reaction to those frame rates being less acceptable, in spite of the fact that the sense of realism more directly corresponds to human visual experience. The Hobbit was an example of this, as is ShowScan and some of the new experimental formats. Interesting, but not the motion picture experience we have come to love. That said, some DPs tend to like higher frame rates as they free them to pan the camera faster through the shot (at 24 FPS, you can only move the camera so fast.)
 
Yes, and don´t even need After Effects and Premiere to do this. If you can´t get them as student´s versions, there is quite a lot of shareware or even freeware ou there that lets you do the "simple" things like basic composting. The Magix software suite comes to mind, then there is "Blender" which also helps with the integration of 3D, and a lot of other packages.

Thanks; i've been learning Blender over the past year, and our director has a fairly up to date copy of after effects. We'll be using rotoscoping for the live action, and either fully rendered ships or composited models if we can get a greenscreen working.
-Matt
 
Thank you for the hints! I have been learning Blender a bit, too, over the past couple of weeks, and as I don't really like it for modeling, it seems to have what I need for compositing. Now I just have to build the real models, get a camera and do some clips ;-)

Again, thanks for the answers!

Thorsten
 
http://www.rickingalsbestudio.com/pages/Effects_Videos.html

The above link to my sight includes two new effects videos and an expanded "Homemade Star Wars" video with all new scenes that answer the question, Just where did Vader go after spinning off into space after the Death Star blew up? (I know, Robot Chicken, right? Well, this is my take on that) The page explains each, so I won't repeat it here. Enjoy!
 
Quick question: Which codec did you render the QT video out as? I'm having problems viewing it here on my MacPro.

SB
 
My Homemade Star Wars video had over 6,550 hits since I posted it on my site in June. I want to thank all of you who have watched it and liked it, especially those who were inspired by it. I wish all who want to try doing something like this much success.

I wanted to put it on YouTube where it would get even more exposure. After uploading it, I was able to preview it before deciding to make it public. I was greatly disappointed when the quality was reduced to an unwatchable mess. I refused to go through with it. Many videos on YouTube are reduced to horrible quality, yet some are excellent. I don't know what the excellent ones are made of, and don't know how to find out. Anyone here tech savvy enough to know what to do?
 
My Homemade Star Wars video had over 6,550 hits since I posted it on my site in June. I want to thank all of you who have watched it and liked it, especially those who were inspired by it. I wish all who want to try doing something like this much success.

I wanted to put it on YouTube where it would get even more exposure. After uploading it, I was able to preview it before deciding to make it public. I was greatly disappointed when the quality was reduced to an unwatchable mess. I refused to go through with it. Many videos on YouTube are reduced to horrible quality, yet some are excellent. I don't know what the excellent ones are made of, and don't know how to find out. Anyone here tech savvy enough to know what to do?

The version you upload to youtube should usually be as big/lossless as possible so when encoding it, encode it with a really high bitrate and such :)
That way the video will lose less quality/detail when youtube applies it's codec.
 
My Homemade Star Wars video had over 6,550 hits since I posted it on my site in June. I want to thank all of you who have watched it and liked it, especially those who were inspired by it. I wish all who want to try doing something like this much success.[/SIZE]

Thank you for sharing the video with us. As I've said before, this is a great example of how old-school effects can be used in the modern age of filmmaking and still look just as impressive. And I've even shared it on Facebook on a DSLR Photography/Filmmaking group to show how such techniques can be done these days. You've pretty much shown it can be done.
 
Thank you for sharing the video with us. As I've said before, this is a great example of how old-school effects can be used in the modern age of filmmaking and still look just as impressive. And I've even shared it on Facebook on a DSLR Photography/Filmmaking group to show how such techniques can be done these days. You've pretty much shown it can be done.

Awesome! Thanks!
 
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