Autodesk Combustion has an extremely powerful tool – 3D fog for simulating and rendering realistic fog in your compositions. But 3D fog uses a Z-Depth which is usually obtained from 3D software packages like Maya or 3D Max while rendering. What if you working on 2D composite and need finish it quickly. To speed up things you can use pre-made fog footage. So whenever you want to composite fog onto footage, you can just make use of this footage.

Step 1

Create a new composition – File->New and import your footage – File->Import Footage.

Step 2

Create a new composition and add your pre-rendered fog footage to it.

Step 3

Add a Compound blur operator to footage. Go to operator settings by double clicking on compound blur node. Set the layer input to fog with luminance channel selected. Adjust the blur value to simulate diffraction.

Step 4

Add Set Matte operator to fog. Choose the layer – fog and set the input channel to luminance.

Step 5

Create a new composition “output”. Link the footage and fog node to the output node as shown in schematic diagram. Make sure that fog layer is on top on footage layer.

With this you are done.

Skin retouching is mostly used for photographs, but rarely used with videos. Doing it with photographs is much easier than with a video. A photograph is a single image whereas a video is made up of many such images called frames and each frame is dissimilar to each other. There could be 15 to 30 frames in a one-second video. Thus making the task of skin re-touching in a video near to impossible. In this tutorial, we will see how to re-touch skin of an actor to remove blemishes and scars with the help of Autodesk Combustion 2008.

Step 1

Create a new composition. File->New

Step 2

You will see black composition screen. Now add footage File->Import Footage. You can change video format, resolution, etc by clicking on Source Option button.

Step 3

You will now see your footage in your composition. You need to do little adjustment to your workspace. You can use the toolbox buttons to add, change, zoom and switch the views. Use two or more view port layout by clicking the “view port layout button”. Change first view port to schematic view.

Step 4

Create new composition with the name “Upper Layer” and attach this composition node to previous one.

Now add discrete keyer and attach the node to “upper layer composition node”

Step 5

Before we do any visual enhancement, we shall create a new composition to see changes done to the final output. Otherwise, every time you will have to shift each composition node to view port to view the changes. Create new composition File->New. Name this composition “Final Composition”. Link it to previous node. Now to view this composition in the view port, select composition layer from the workspace area and drag it to view port. You can now view the final output.

Step 6

Double click on Discreet Keyer node to get its controls. Use the color dropper to select the skin area. Use tolerance offset, softness offset (important for later steps) to cover as much of skin area you can. See that you don`t over do this.

Step 7

Create a new composition and name it “lower layer”. Link lower layer composition node to first composition node.

Step 8

Now add compound blur Operators->Blur/Sharpen->Compound Blur. Link the nodes as shown in the screenshot.

Step 9

Double click on compound Blur Node. Go to compound blur control panel and change the value of blur until the blemishes and pimples disappear.

Step 10

Add Discreet Color Corrector Operator (Operators->Color Correction->Discreet Color Correcter) and add its node between compound blur and the final composition node. This will allow you to change the skin tones. Double click on Discreet Color Corrector node to get the control options. Values will depend totally on the video of the actor that is used. Also don`t over do this. In addition, we will again do this step for entire footage later on. If you are new to this, it is better not to change the values for now. You can come back to this later once color correction for entire picture is completed. Make sure that the layer are properly organised. “Lower layer” should be below “upper layer”.

Step 11

Add sharpen between Discreet color corrector and final composition node. Sharpen just a little bit.

Step 12

Create a new composition and drag it to view port. Add “add Noise” (Operators->Noise->Add Noise) and “Discreet Color Corrector” (Operators->Color Correction->Discreet Color Corrector) Operators and link the node as shown in the screenshot. You can use other color correction tools also.

Step 13

Double click on Discreet Color Corrector to get the control options. Adjust the curves and Histogram for midtones, shadows, higlights and RGB channels. This adjustment totally depends upon your video footage. I used the following vales that work for me with this footage.

Step 14

Double click on Add noise and slightly increase the noise. This gives your video more natural look.

With few minute adjustments you are done. Render the output composition.

Bleach Bypass is a processing technique used for color film to obtain low-saturated and high contrast images. It involves total or partial omission of the bleaching function when processing a color film. Thus, the silver in the emulsion remains with the color dyes.

Last time we had released free Cross-processed preset and yet again we have come up with Bleach Bypass Preset. Yes we love old film effects. Do forget to subscribe our feed to get the future releases.

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Installation

As shown in the screenshot above, place the folder in your After Effects Preset folder. Once you restart After Effects it will be shown in the effects -> Animation Preset

Control Amount of Silver

In real world of film making tilt-shift effect is normally added by using special tilt-shift lenses. But when it comes to low budget film making Adobe After Effects software comes in handy. In this tutorial we will see how to digitally manipulate the tilt shift effect to turn an ordinary scene into that of a miniature model.

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Step 1

Drag/add your footage to comp area. Create a new solid layer and name it to ‘top’. Add ramp effect to it with the values as shown in the screenshot.

Step 2

Duplicate the ‘top’ layer and rename it to down. Place it below the ‘top’ layer. Swap the ramp colors for the ‘down’ layer.

Step 3

Set the blend mode of ‘top’ layer to Lighten. Now for the layer bottom, add this simple expression to the start point of the Ramp effect (By selecting the layer Press E to show effect parameters. Then hold down ALT key and click the stop watch).

thisComp.layer(“top”).effect(“Ramp”)(“End of Ramp”)

This will allow you to do easily change the point of focus in the scene without messing with top/bottom effect parameters.

Step 4

Next select both the ‘top’ and the ‘bottom’ layer and pre-compose them (name it gradient). Layer-> Pre-Compose. Place the pre-composed gradient layer below the footage layer. Add lens blur effect to the footage layer. Set the values as shown in the screenshot. Adjust the iris radius depending upon your footage.

Step 5

To the same layer add Hue/Saturation effect. Increase the saturation a little bit.

Step 6

Now add brightness and contrast effect to the same layer. Adjust the value the get good colorful output. Do not to increase the contrast too much. This may led to overall increase in color details. Add curves if you can`t get the desired effect along with brightness and contrast effect, but not necessary. S curve will do the work

Step 7

Now to give it a stop-motion animation effect, lower the frame rate.

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Cross-processing was used during the age of film cameras to give photographs a unique look. Technically it is the process of treating a film with the chemicals usually used for different type of film –like developing transparency film with  C41 process. Cross-processed After Effects Preset will help you to digitally add this effect to your footage.

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Installation

As shown in the screenshot below, place the folder in your After Effects Preset folder. Once you restart After Effects it will be shown in the effects -> Animation Preset

Create a School blackboard animated drawing effect from your footage.

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Step 1

Create a new composition and add the footage to it.

Step 2

By adding Hue/Saturation effect, de-saturate it.

Step 3

Add Find Edge effect to the footage layer. Enable the invert.

Step 4

Now add levels to the layer for further adjustment.

Step 5

Add bilateral blur to remove the minute details.

Step 6

Add sharpen effect to sharpen the white lines.

Step 7

Next create a new solid layer (grey or green) and set the blend mode to linear dodge.

Project File

Note: Setting values can change according to the footage used

Give a vintage look to your footage similar to that obtained from Lomo Cameras. Originally lomo cameras are still cameras that are used for causal cheap photography. But the photographs obtained from such cameras have a unique look to it. In this tutorial you will learn to digitally manipulate cross-processed lomo effect and add it to your video footage.

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Step 1

Create a new composition and name it to lomo. Import and add the footage to this composition.

Step 2

Add curves to the footage layer.

Red

Green

Blue

Step 3

Create a new black solid layer. Set the blend mode to hue and opacity to 30%.

Step 4

Add unsharp Mask to the footage layer to sharpen it.

Step 5

Create a new adjustment layer and add elliptical mask to it. Layer->Mask->New Mask. Then with the layer selected press M key to get the mask option. Select the mask layer and go to Layer-> Mask->Mask Shape. Choose reset to ellipse. Next with the mask selected press F key to use the feather option. Feather the mask about 100px and choose the mode to subtract.

Step 6

Now to make the edges darker, add levels to the adjustment layer and set the values as shown in the screenshot.

Step 7

Add lens blur effect to adjustment layer and set the values as shown in screenshot.

Now you have a lomo effect.

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In this tutorial you will learn how to turn your footage into a colorful painting. Tutorial uses built-in after effects plug-ins .The effect settings value may change depending upon you footage color, brightness and the type. This is the one of the best method which works with most of the camera footages.

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Step 1

Import your footage to project area. Create a new composition named Footage and add your video footage to it.

Step 2

Create another composition named final and add footage comp to it. Now duplicate the footage layer 4 times (CTRL+D)

Step 3

Change the blend modes of the layer as shown below.

Step 4

Add Hue/Saturation effect to second layer and de-saturate it.

Step 5

Add invert effect to second layer.

Step 6

Add Median effect to the last layer and set the radius value to 8.

Step 7

Next add cartoon effect to first layer and set the values to as shown in the screenshot (Play with the values for best output). Remember that Cartoon effect uses GPU processing and will take lot of time to render if you are not equipped with good graphics card.

Step 8

Add bilateral blur effect to first layer and change the values as shown as in the screenshot.

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