Recreating Star Trek’s Briar Patch with Motion Control

This is a collaboration with ‪@nmphoto37‬ who has been using a motion control to film models with amazing results. We’ve worked together to create an action sequence set in the Briar Patch from Star Trek: Insurrection.

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The Enterprise enters the Briar Patch, passes through some nebula clouds, is attacked by the So’Na before coming about to strike back. It was a fun sequence to create and you can see the results here:

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In this tutorial, after explaining how this video came about, I start by using the rotobrush tool to cut out the Enterprise from the blue background. Then I use this as a Track Matte for the beauty pass shot. This cuts out the starship but removes any concerns over spill. Next I take the lighting pass and use the Levels effect to darken the background and brighten the lights, before separating the nacelles to enhance them further with a glow.

Once that’s done, I then demonstrate how you can use the Camera Tracker to determine the 3D space the ship is meant to be moving in. Using the parent controls in a slightly unusual way to make it seem like a cloud picture is fixed in space while the ship moves. And then I use that to create a luma matte so it appears the Enterprise passes through a cloud.

While all this is going on, I also give a shout out to ‪@SternFX‬ for their tips on camera tracking and demonstrate how I use stock footage assets from ‪@PexelsPhotos‬ and ‪@ActionVFXofficial‬ to make the final sequence.

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