“Predator” effect in AE…

[Andrew Shanks]

Displacement maps are a good place to start for a quick and easy technique. We did a similar effect once, had our character keyed against a greenscreen, she came towards us invisible but warping the surroundings, then had her pulse mildly into view a few times (about 25% opacity, up from zero). Use the displacement map filter on your background layer (or adjustment layer), have your source figure on the top layer (turn off visibility for it, i.e. uncheck the eye), and in the displacement map filter settings, choose that character layer as your source, …then tweak filter settings to suit (if its not giving you a pronounced enough effect, possibly add levels to the character layer, to punch up the contrast a bit). Mess around, but that is a simple way to get the effect. A more correct way is to have a basic 3d model move through shot (and generate a greyscale depth matte out of your 3d application, that you can use as a source for your displacement mapping).

Goodluck!

andrew

🙂

[Aharon Rabinowitz]

I don’t know if they were doing much in the way of 3D when predetor was first released. If you want to learn the basics of Displacement maps, check out these tutorials:

https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_page_wrapper.cgi?forumid=2&page=https://www.creativecow.net/articles/rabinowitz_aharon/displacement1/index.html

https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_page_wrapper.cgi?forumid=2&page=https://www.creativecow.net/articles/rabinowitz_aharon/displacement2/index.html

https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_page_wrapper.cgi?forumid=2&page=https://www.creativecow.net/articles/rabinowitz_aharon/displacement3/index.html

—————————————-
Aharon Rabinowitz
aharon(AT)yahoo(DOT)com
http://www.allbetsareoff.com
—————————————-
Creative Cow Master Series DVD
particleIllusion Fusion Volume 1
available @ http://www.pIllusionFusion.com

[Chris Zwar]

I used to read Cinefex religiously, because I loved knowing how they did all the effects like this before you could do everything on a desktop computer. If you can find a library somewhere with an archive of Cinefex then you should be able to find articles from when the film came out with details on how they did it.
From memory, all background plates in Predator were shot twice, with the second plate about 30% wider. The matte of the Predator character was used to determine whether you saw the original background or the wide version. I don’t think it was much more than that.
In AE, Displacement Maps are possibly a better and “too slick” method of getting the same effect. You could try just scaling up your background plate, or using the Optics Compensation Plugin to generate a warped BG plate, then just use your character’s matte for that.

But go and look for Predator in old copies of Cinefex, it will be worth the effort,

-Chris

Motion Graphics Designer
Will animate for food

[Andrew Shanks]

Cheers Chris, I have to say I was wondering how they did it, as it was in the days when Optical processes still were the norm and digital compositing was a new (and expensive) option. Makes sense, since if you used a nice fisheye lense, you’d get a nice rolling off effect when the predator was centre frame. In AE maybe try doing the same, using the matte as suggested with optics or bulge as the filter, …and see what you get if you make the distortion over the top on that layer, and then animate the centre point of the effect (lense centre) to follow the character, could get a nice effect where the sides of the character seem to bulge out to the central part of the body (i.e. a fake 3d feel), …then maybe add in a small amount of displacement mapping using the character, just to add detailing/texture to the effect.

Goodluck and let us know how you get on. 🙂

[Justin Productions]

https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/page_wrapper.cgi?forumid=2&page=https://www.creativecow.net/articles/hamill_alan/invisible_man/index.html

Justin Productions
Tangerin01@hotmail.com
Adobe After Effects 6.5 Professional

[Mrshow555]

Thanks for the help everyone! I heart the Creative Cow comunity 🙂

-Bill

[Artflame Noir]

So.. What ever came out of this?.. I have a similar thing coming up soon.. (making a character become liquid like).. I read all that on displacement mapping etc. but somehow I still don’t get it.. Not it the practical sense of how do I make it work for this thing?

any chance some of the Big Cow Gods turn their smiling faces on us mortal and shine some tutorial mercy. Mr. Kramer? Mr. Rabinowitz? Beg, beg beg…