Going MAD?

You know the feeling when you've got too many things on the go, it sometimes feels like nothing ever gets finished? Okay, it's actually just more of a really complicated project than anything. I've been filming for a work project that is almost entirely green screen and virtual sets. The story was written, storyboard drawn, and now a big chunk of the filming has been completed. The remainder of the filming will be more live action than green screen, but every frame will still be touched by the After Effects magic wand.

Speaking of After Effects. Video Copilot released their new plugin Element 3D! This is really going to change the playing field. From 3D textured text to animating reflecting logos, it is a pretty powerful tool. It isn't raytraced (which means it's not really reflecting things), but it still very convincing. What it is is very fast!

I saw a handful of people on YouTube animating objects and text and making some really great looking stuff, but I thought I'd go for something different. Since my green screen is all set up, I thought I'd take the opportunity to film a couple of shots. The flickering light on me is a halogen being bounced off of a wiggling car windshield reflector. The cave was a basic object modeled in Blender, and brought into Element 3D. I textured it and added the rock objects to the scene all in Element. The really cool thing is you can move around your lights along with the character. Once the cave was set up I duplicated multiple instances of Element to be layer in front of and behind my character. The music is from the "Horror Movie Music" collection from Neumann Films. They have some great stuff, and a bunch of free (even for commercial use) music as well! All you have to do is give Luke credit for the music. Check it out here.

Anyways, here is my Element 3D virtual set. Hope you like it!