Special Effects R&D

About 2 years ago I was working on a project where students would learn about Milky Way Galaxy. I was contracted to provide the special effects shots for the film. The clip from above was part of the test shots that were used to visualize what the end product might look like.

This started out as an After Effects project. To create the shot, a 2D image was used and then it was extrapolated into 3D. The Colors from the image were projected on to a field of particles from Trapcode Particularfrom Red Giant.

From there a glow was added to the particles and some color grading was done with Magic Bullet Looks. Along with the color work a little bit of lens artifact was added though for the final shot it was changed. It added a weird artifact near the end of the clip. We could have edited it out but these shots were R&D after all so we knew that we were going to redo the shot for the production.

Planet Visualizations

Once the dive through the galaxy reached our solar system we see flyby's of the planets with a HUD - heads up display and a voice over told students about the planet. We covered all 9 (at the time) known planets. The planets were also done in After Effects with help from the Element 3D plugin from Video Coplilot.

This is a flyby test of the earth:

Zoom In From Space

Here is another R&D shot. The director wanted us to have a shot that zoomed into the local level from out in space. To accomplish this we again used after effects and about 50 shots from increasing levels of zoom from Google Earth. These shots were stacked together and were cross desolved into one another to give the planet fall effect.