Special Effect Videos
I Love Wendy's, YouTube, 7:10
Dec 2022
For this video project, I wanted to explore the combination of digital assets I either created in Cinema 4D or downloaded from 3D open-source websites with real-life footage I recorded. This included putting 3D characters into the real world through Adobe After Effect's camera tracker or putting myself into a 3D-created environment through a green screen. For complicated movements, such as the goblin pointing, I used templates from Mixamo to make the animations look more fluid or I would use pre-made green screen videos of rigged 3D characters. This project proved to be a bit challenging since my main setting was in a forest and that made it very difficult for After Effect's camera tracker to do its job well. Still, it was a great learning experience for what I had to do in pre-production to achieve a better result.
This scene with the goblin was my first attempt in trying to combine an animated 3D model from Cinema 4D using After Effects and Premier Pro. I had to manually key frame its position since it was difficult for the camera tracker to distinguish the ground from the background.
Inserting myself into a 3D environment proved to be a bit more challenging than originally expected. The camera's settings, position, and the lighting equipment around it had to be adjusted rather than just me moving closer to the camera. The one thing I regret not doing is color correcting the footage to get rid of the green tint on my arm.
At this point in the project I realized that After Effects works best when the floor in the footage is distinguishable either through its color or through physical marks so adding this dragon green screen was a lot easier.
Masking in Premier Pro proved to be a lot more efficient than in Sony Vegas. However, if I were to do this scene over I would use the rotobrush tool in After Effects because it is much better at cutting out moving objects.