USS Kelvin flyby (blender and After Effects) - composite breakdown

model of the USS Kelvin by Tobias Richter (The Lightworks) and sourced from sci-fimeshes.com

my first attempt at 3D. I downloaded the blender mesh, created a flyby animation and moved the camera accordingly. Lens Flares are courtesy of Andrew Krames 'Optical Flares' package. The starfield was rendered from blender. The planets are on cards in After Effects with a blendercam getting the movement right.

blender render took 36 hrs at full HD with mblur (tho that could be cos i was doing something wrong!) Another couple of hours for the comp and breakdown.

all in all I'm pretty happy with the results and its definitely encouraged me to continue learning 3D animation and scene setup to add to my compositing skillset.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Simon Herden
• USS Kelvin
• Star Trek 2009
• After Effects
• CS5
• Heavily Armed Productions
• blender
• 3d
• space
• sci-fi
• vfx
• composite
• breakdown
• before and after
• Andrew Kramer
• Optical Flares
• Action Essentials 2
• Video Copilot
• Adelaide
• South Australia

[MW2BoosterControl]

How do you take a blender model and put it into AE? or do you have to animated it all in blender then just use AE for some simple jizz? Blender seems so complicated

[hapmoriarty]

@MW2BoosterControl AE is just for the compositing, so the ship is lit and animated in blender and rendered. After that I bring the ship render into AE, import the 3d camera from blender into AE, place some planets/starfields on cards in 3d space (which is why the 3d camera got imported), and to finish it all off add some lens flares and additional lighting effects on the ship (engine glows, search lights etc).

[IamYasonBourne]

This is great! I am wondering though if it is possible to create your own images (i.e. ships, etc.) in after effects? Is there a part of the program that allows you to custom create things like your uss kelvin for instance and your background or is that a different program entirely? May sound stupid but I've been reading everywhere and cant seem to find anything. Great job again.

[hapmoriarty]

@IamYasonBourne Thanks a lot for that :) to answer your question, unfortunately you'll need to go to another program for that. After Effects is for the compositing of all those separate images into the final shot. It's capable of generating a few things from scratch (some particle work for example), but generally speaking you're looking to make the ships in something like; blender, maya, 3DS, lightwave etc. hope this helps.

[IamYasonBourne]

@hapmoriarty One more thing. Is Adobe after effects a program where you can put all your clips together after you've worked on them and create a movie? Or is it a program that is only for editing clips and then transfering them over to another program to then make the movie? I just don't want to buy after effects and then find I can't make an actual movie. Anything else I should be aware of before I buy this? Thanks

[hapmoriarty]

@IamYasonBourne You can do editing in After Effects, and it'll support working with audio, but it can be a bit of a laborious process since you can't lay one clip next to another on the same timeline, you have to keep building layers. You could give it a shot and if you don't like doing the editing you can always find a free (iMovie or windows Moviemaker) program to do that part. head to videocopilot for a better idea of what After Effects can achieve

[m1tCh51]

Nice work man! Your VFX are great!!

[Dudzezcooly]

Holy shit, it's actualy like movie quality

[wannie424]

how do you make that?

[josediogomafra]

Can you send me the model? Its beautyfull

[IamYasonBourne]

@hapmoriarty No problem, your work really looks professional. And yes thank you for that information. I've had no luck on this topic anywhere so it is much appreciated. Thanks again

[sniper002]

@hapmoriarty Ahh thanks for the reply man!, and i cant wait to see that short film, as longs as you keep them awesome lighting effects, top quality sound effects (sometimes you can find them royalty sites) and add your amazing talent to it, im sure itll be a big hit on you tube. Good luck man, :D