Jay Haynes for the Film Sensei YouTube
channel! Today in this video we are going
to do this Glowing Decay Effect in
HitFilm Express!
So you might think that I used the new
Surface Studio Effect in HitFilm Pro, and
you would be thinking wrong, because I'm
actually using HitFilm Express, and I am
working in version 11, but you can do
this effect all the way back to version
4 and it still works, because that's when
the Parallax Effect was first added to
Hitfilm Express. So we are going to go
ahead and create a new Composite Shot,
and I'm going to make it ten seconds
long to match the voiceover that I just
did. The graphic I'm going to create
will just be a new text. So I'm creating
a new text, and I'm just going to type in
the letters glow. Then I'm just going
to sort of build these, or create this,
and just know that it isn't necessary
for me to have a Text be the graphic. It
can actually be anything that you want.
I'm just going to use a text, and then
when I am satisfied and I like what I
see, then I'm going to right click on it and
say make it into a Composite Shot and
call it Graphic. So this will be the base
graphic that I am using in the main
composite shot. I'm going to go ahead and
add a light and a camera to go with that
light. I'll go ahead and turn off the
crosshairs or floor plains of the camera.
That light I'm going to rename to be
the Front Light, and I will do a couple
of things to it. One is I'm going to make it
(instead of being a point light) I want it
to be a directional light. It will just
create a more of an even light over it.
Much nicer! Also, I'm going to, since I'm
going to have two lights in this scene, I'm
going to go and knock it down to fifty
intensity. I'm just going to go ahead
and place this to the left by about five
thousand pixels, above the letters by
about five thousand pixels, and in front
of everything by about five thousand
pixels. So now I can go ahead,
right click on that and say duplicate.
I'll just go ahead and rename this
the Back Light and it'll be exactly the
same except that it will be on the other
side. So here's a little trick... if I hold
down the control key and I click on a
number, it will change the sign of that
number. So I'm just going to do all three
of those. So now I have the back light
over on the lower right hand behind
corner and the front light in the upper
left hand in front corner. If I go ahead
now and add a Parallax Effect, you'll see
that this will work. I'm going to put this
on the graphic. If I open this up, I
can change it to an inverted map and
then if I extend the depth to 200 you
can see it sort of is creating an
extruded extrusion like an effect. I
can have that, or I don't need it. I can
use it or not, but I think I will go
ahead and leave it here for now. I'm
just going to rename it the Parallax
Extrusion because there'll be a couple
of more Parallax Effects that I'm going
to use. Next I want to go ahead and
create the Fractal Noise Plane that will
act as my Decay Map. So I will create a
New Plane Layer and click OK. I want
to go ahead and add a Fractal Noise
Effect to it, dragging it on. If I
open up the Fractal Noise, there's a
couple of things I want to change. One is
this... I want to change the Scale under
the Transform Properties of the effect
itself, not of the plane, but of the
effect. I can just kind of scale that
down to about 50 or so... yep, it is good.
Let's go 50 and (whoops... 50!) and also under
the sub settings, actually no, under the
appearance, I want to go ahead and up the
exposure to about 1. Make it a little
brighter. Then I'm just going to go
ahead and keyframe the offset. So let me
just pull this down and you can see that
basically I'm going to have it start as
totally not visible. Keyframe that. Maybe
come out to about 8 seconds and just
draw it back so that it's somewhat
visible. Maybe there.
Okay, and I'm going to make that ending one
a smooth keyframe so it just sort of
eases into it like that. Now I'm
going to be fairly happy with that. So what
I will do is drag this to the bottom and
I'm going to go ahead and right-click on it
and say make it into its own Composite
Shot. I do need it to be in its own
Composite Shot or at least under a Grade
Layer. You can do it either way, but I'm
going to go ahead and move all of the
properties with it and click OK.
So now here it is and it looks very good.
Let me come back and I can go ahead
and take off the visibility of it,
because it does not need to be visible
to be used as a map for the Decay Effect.
So let me go ahead and add a Parallax
Effect to the graphic, and if I open this
up and source the decay map you can see
there it is. I'm going to go ahead and pull
down the depth a little bit... maybe to
about 20, and that looks pretty
nice. Actually I'm very fond of that! What
I want to do is, though, I want to go
ahead and duplicate that. If I
come in maybe about one second and I
just drag it back I can go ahead and add
a second. I'm going to duplicate that
Parallax Effect. Then I'm going to add a
second decay, sourcing the second decay,
which is one second following. So what
this basically means is that it's
going to start in on adding the decay, and
then one second later it will repeat
that, cutting in deeper again. So it
sort of creates a layered effect which
is pretty cool, right? You can see how
it just is pulling that after the fact.
So it's it's it's a double layer effect,
and I really am happy. I think that that looks
much better. Okay, that second layer is what I'm going
to work the decay coloring on. So you can
see now it's mostly very riddled with
decay. So what I want to do, is I want to
duplicate that second effect
and I'm just going to bring it above the
graphic and then tick on the
visibility. You can see that it's
covering the whole screen. so I'm going
to start by using a Set Matte Effect and
by using that Set Matte Effect, and
sourcing the graphic itself,
I can restrict where it is seen. I
just want it to be seen where the
graphic is. Okay, now what I want to do is
I want to change the color of the white
to be whatever I want it to be. So let's
go ahead and add a Tint Effect, and in
the Tint Effect, if I open it up, I want
to tint 100% mapping the white to
whatever color I feel like. So if I want
that to be, say, red, I can make it red. If
I want it to be, you know, green, I can
make it green. If I want it to be blue, I
can make it blue. Looks lovely! Okay, now I
want to go ahead and remove the black
parts. So we'll just use a keying effect,
and the keying effect will be the Demult
Key, which removes the black part.
So now you can see it's just on the
mapping of where the decay is. I do want
it to reflect (reflect is not the
right word), but demonstrate the Parallax
Effect of the of the graphic
below. So I'm gonna add a Parallax Eeffect
to it, and I will open it up and make it
20 to match the other Parallax Effects.
So now it looks like it belongs there.
Yeah, that looks great! Okay, so now I
sort of have this situation where it is
expanding. Remember, it's starting to
expand without the blue on it, and then
one second later, the blue starts to come
in as the expansion continues. It
looks pretty cool! Now we're going to go
ahead and add the Glow Effects to it. I'm going to add a Glow or search up for
the Glow Effect and drop that on there.
I'm going to open this up. Let's make
the intensity about 1.3. Let's make
the radius about 70... no, let's make it 60!
You can sort of play with these
numbers to match your color scheme and
whatever. Then I'm going to duplicate the
glow, and opening that up, we're going to
lower the intensity maybe to 1, and the
radius to say 100. Then I'm going to
duplicate it one more time and let's go
down to about 0.7. and up the radius to
about 140. This is a technique that I
like to refer to as the "Javert Triple
Glow Effect."
Javert over at HitFilm likes to
multi-layer different glowing effects
where he starts with a
higher intensity and then on each
progressive one he drops the intensity a
little bit lower. At the same time he
starts with a lower radius and then ups
the radius as he goes along, and it
creates this very nice looking glow
effect. Okay. One more thing I think I'll
add to this particular layer, and
that will be the Auto Light Flare. I will
drop this on underneath everything. If I
open that up,
I can under Hot Spot Generation, Max
Number of Flares, I can just crank that
up to 100. Then I can drop the
Threshold. The problem is that the
color is wrong. So I will open it up and
change the color to match the color that
I have here and click OK. Now I can drop
this. I don't want to get carried away,
and I don't want it to be, you know,
whatever, so I'm just going to make
that just enough to really kind of have
it glow, but I don't want to blow it completely out all over the place. Just a
little bit... yeah that looks great!
So now, how do I create the streaks there?
What i'm going to do is right click on...
wait, let me rename that "Glow" just so that
I know what it is. If I right click on that
and duplicate it, and I will rename that
"Streaks."
Now here's what I'm going to do... I'm
going to find the Zoom Blur Effect and drop it on there. If I open that up,
I can go ahead and just up the strength to
100 giving myself a nice zoom blur.
I think for this one, though, I can probably
kill the Auto Light Flare, the Glows, and
even the Parallax Effect. In fact, I
can just go ahead and delete those.
So now when we're finished we have this!
 
What I'm going to do for you is I'm just
going to go ahead and save this project now
and let you download it I if you want to
have it. I will include it in the
description below.
Remember that you can make this any
color that you want. So it could be red,
purple, pink, green, yellow, dark blue, or
any other color that you like. If you
like this kind of content please feel
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