Body Inflation Tutorial

Mini Tutorial!

Body Inflation Tutorial

                So I got this request, and it was on my list anyway so here we go.  I will take you through how to do this effect step by step with links to all the gear and software I used to do it.  Most of the links are Amazon.com affiliate links, so if you use the link, I get a tiny cut of the sale.

The effect:    We are going to inflate poor Jane from this:

to this:

Here is a link to the final video:

https://youtu.be/WbbDcyUnR2E

For this you will need:

Pre-Production:

                A background plate: Just some image of a room or whatever taken about the same angle as you are going to shoot it.   Easy tip.... take the shot with your tripod at the same level you will shoot your actor at.

Production:

                A Green Screen and Lights.  You will need to isolate her from the background, this makes it much easier.

                Here is a good kit:

             

A Camera of course... DSLR would work just fine that here, here is what I use:

                And a Tripod is really needed for this one.

            
                 An Actor (or actress).  I would recommend pretty close to the costume you see here, long skirt, tight fitted shirt, solid colors without patterns.  Anything more than that would mean a bit of work for you.

Post-Production:  As always I am using Adobe products, you can get EVERYTHING they make for 1 monthly cost, check out adobe.com for details (note... I do not get a cut of that one...)

Also I am using Re:flect Morph by RE:vision  Here is the website for that:

http://revisionfx.com/products/reflex/

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OK, now lets get this set up.

Not much pre-production prep on this one, and you can script it or just let your actress make up stuff.

Set up your camera so you can get a fully body shot on the green screen, with nice even lighting.  I will go over that in detail in a future tutorial.

Shooting:

Have her stand pretty still. More movement means more work for you. 

Jane here tends to rock when she talks, so there was some natural movement to deal with.  You don't want her standing ramrod still but you don't want her all over the place either.

Have her slowly move her legs apart as they clip goes on too and move her arms away from her body as well.  

Make sure she does not cross her arms in front of her body or move them too wildly.

We are doing a 2-D warp on her, so we are very limited in what movement works and what just makes this impossible.

That's it.  Pretty simple to shoot.

Post-Production:

OK now the real work begins.

Note that this is how *I* like to do things, you can vary the steps a bit if you want.

I like to edit the clip first in Adobe premiere, trim what you do not need.  Once that is all set highlight the clip with the mouse and right click, then select "Replace with After Effect composition"

Once in After Effects first we will Pre-Compose the footage,  by right clicking on it and selecting:

Now we will remove the green screen.

Use Keylight to drop out the greens (hey that is another whole tutorial).

I am not going to get into Keying just yet, it would make this novel length, but there are many many good tutorials on youtube on about it.

Now we have her isolated and on her new background.

We are going to use the RE:vision Warp Plugin.

Once you run it, you need to create the mask.

Now you have to draw a mask around her body, make it easier for yourself and set it for "none" so you can see what you are doing.  Be careful where you put the points, you need them on her bust and hips with nice curves to adjust.  To get the curve click with the mask tool and drag slightly when creating points.

Like The red mask here.

Now on the mask menu hit the stopwatch symbol

Now you can edit the mask and have it move over time.

Now the super annoying, tedious, long, painful part of all this.

You have to make key frames, she is going to move slightly all the time.  How accurate you are here is how good your effect will look.  I am a lazy video editor, I did about  1 key frame every second, and half second (15 frames) when the movement required it.  Take your time, do this as well as you can.

Each of these dots is a keyframe:

Once you have done this, Duplicate the mask hit Ctrl-D

Now you have two copies, I lock the first one by hitting the lock button:

And then to make life a bit easier , change the color of the mask with this button:

Now you all those changes you just did?  You can do them AGAIN.  This time you can going to slowly move them away from her body, to show her inflating, how much she changes between each frame, that is up to you.  But you have go through and adjust all the points on her mask. 

Blue is her original form, red is the warped mask.

If you Re:flex set to show effect you can see her adjust and expand each time.

That is pretty much it.   Save your work, go back to premiere and render.