Portland, OR - June 11, 2020 - Red Giant has just released the newest episode of Cheap Tricks, their handy VFX tutorial series hosted by Daniel “Hashi” Hashimoto, the Action Movie Dad: “What’s Kraken? Fractured Ice Surface Tutorial.” Out now on the Red Giant YouTube channel, Hashi takes on the challenge of breaking the ice using dynamics in Maxon Cinema 4D, then brings it all together with live action footage in Adobe® After Effects® for an awesome VFX shot.
WATCH NOW: Cheap Tricks Episode 15 - What's Kraken
In this tutorial, viewers will learn about basic 3D modeling, dynamics, texturing, and compositing in Adobe After Effects, and how to do this using footage with lens distortion. Hashi also offers instruction on 3D normalization, which he recently covered in a separate standalone tutorial.
As for breaking the lens-distorted ice to make it look like a monster is chasing the ice skater in his “What’s Kraken” Cheap Tricks tutorial, Hashi explains, “The footage has got some pretty severe lens distortion - and I hate lens distortion. So much that I’ve always just avoided it or ignored it… But this is why I’m thrilled that the latest edition of VFX Suite includes a new tool called Lens Distortion Matcher. It’s the simplest way I’ve ever been able to undistort my comp and then re-distort my work to match the original.”
Follow along by downloading a free trial of both Red Giant Complete and Maxon Cinema 4D to get access to fully functioning versions of all of Red Giant and Maxon’s tools. Visit the Red Giant blog to learn more about how Hashi successfully shatters a sheet of distorted ice and uses 3D normalization to simulate a lake monster breaking through and chasing an ice skater.
The Red Giant/Maxon tools used in this tutorial includes:
- Maxon Cinema 4D: Cinema 4D is an Academy Sci-Tech award-winning professional 3D modeling, animation, and rendering software solution. Its powerful and flexible toolset makes 3D workflows more accessible for design professionals.
- VFX Lens Distortion Matcher: Lens Distortion Matcher is a new tool that makes matching the distortion of a lens incredibly easy, so that elements can be seamlessly composited in a shot. Lens Distortion can also determine the type of lens used for a shot on its own, in an instant. As curved lines are identified that should be straight, the lens distortion tool quickly solves the lens.
- VFX Reflection: Reflection is a plugin for After Effects that makes it easy to add a reflection to your layers. With controls for softness, distance fade, length and more, this effect goes far beyond the standard methods for creating reflections.
- Magic Bullet Looks: Magic Bullet Looks is designed to give filmmakers powerful looks and color correction, with over 200 fully-customizable Look presets and over 40 tools to customize or build new Looks. Get the best, most-intuitive color correction experience in the industry.