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  • watchmen disintegration

    Posted by Mike Frankford on July 15, 2009 at 2:11 am

    hey guys im about an intermediate in after effects and ive been trying to recreate the effect from watchmen where Jon, also known as Dr. Manhattan, disintegrates in the chamber but i cant seem to get it right, if anybody could help it would be greatly appreciated, the effect is below.

    https://vimeo.com/5600688

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    Mike Frankford replied 16 years, 10 months ago 3 Members · 3 Replies
  • 3 Replies
  • Dave Navarro

    July 15, 2009 at 10:07 am

    You don’t say what tools you have… But watching the original clip, it reminds me somewhat of a combination of Andrew Kramer’s disintegration tutorial and Aharon Rabinoitz’ sand tutorial with trapcode form.

    You would use the same technique in the sand tutorial to create a “form” of pixels for your person then use a grey scale image to drive the particles exploding out in a streaming fashion like in your original footage. Then layer the “chunks” and other effects from Andrews tutorial on top of that.

    Disintegration Tutorial:
    https://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/disintegration/

    Text to Sand transition
    https://www.redgiantsoftware.com/videos/redgianttv/item/22/

    (notice how the particle movement in Form are driven in the desired direction by the gray scale image create in the linear wipe section, and since form is 3D, you can drive particles towards or away from the camera as well.)

  • Scott Novasic

    July 17, 2009 at 7:47 pm

    Dave has some good leads for you. My comments may not be of much help, but to me, this effect was most likely created using a custom written
    effect in true 3d. (larger effects houses do this a lot, and have the talent in house to write the code) The fluid like disintigration is very complex and is
    applied to both the removal of the ‘clothingskin’ layer AND the skeletal layer. If you are not a hi end 3d guy, a program like poser can give you a really good skeleton to match the general shape of the actor, giving you 2 layers of revealdisintegration. If the actor does not move in a complex way, I find using poser perfect for this type of effect (where a skeleton is needed – like cartoonstylized electrocution)
    applications like real flow could have been used as well as composited stock splash footage. (i doubt that though)

    the good news is, since as far as we know, people do not disintegrate in the real world, your artistic interpretation and your talent at executing the look is what will lead to success visually (or not)

    the multilayered disintigration is the cool part, for me, on that shot.

    SuperNova
    Animation & Visual Effects
    Scott Novasic
    Los Angeles Ca
    web:https://web.mac.com/finaleffects

  • Mike Frankford

    July 18, 2009 at 1:37 am

    oh yeah i forgot to add what i have so far (the link is below) and the programs i have are Adobe cs3, 3ds max, cinema 4d, vegas 7 and avid xpress.

    https://vimeo.com/5601555

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