THOR HAMMER SUMMON effect

How's it going everyone, welcome back. Today I'm going to be showing how you can create the Thor Hammer summon effect inside of After Effects. Now for this one, I have a few different shots with an effect. For most of the effects though, I used pretty much the same technique. That technique was filming the hammer in front of a green screen, then compositing that into a different shot. Something that I tried to do was shoot all of my footage in the same location and on the same day. Shooting it like this really helps match all of the lighting and the green screen elements will fit into the final scene better. I ended up shooting 7 different shots, but you can create a more simple version of this effect with less camera angles if you want. For the hammer prop, I ended up getting one off of Amazon. It's a pretty good size and has some decent weight to it. This one was pretty expensive though, so I ended up finding a few other options and they were a lot cheaper. So I'm going to leave a few links for those down in the description for you to check out if you're interested in getting your own. But alright, let's start off with how I shot the footage for this effect. For the first shot, I had the camera on a slider and did a push-in move without the hammer in the shot. Then from that same angle, I shot the hammer in front of a green screen. I still had the camera on the slider, but locked it off and didn't move it for this shot. I placed the hammer on a piece of wood so that the edge was more visible and would be easier to mask out. I also folded back the green screen so that the hammer wasn't sitting directly on top of it. I did this since the hammer was pretty reflective and you could see the green spilling on it. For the third shot, I extended the arm of a c-stand and draped a green screen over it and then also set up another green screen behind it. I then took the hammer and placed it on the c-stand arm while still holding on to it. I held it in place for a few seconds and then started tilting the hammer downward towards the ground. I later reversed this shot in After Effects and used this for when the hammer is tilting up to face the camera. Then I shot a background plate to use for the hammer tilting shot. I just kept the camera on a tripod for this so that I didn't have to do any extra motion tracking. For the fifth shot, I had the camera on a tripod and filmed myself catching the hammer. My wife was tossing it to me and at the same time using a leaf blower to create some wind. This added to the effect of the hammer flying in with a lot of force. It was okay that she was in the frame for this because I masked her out later. Then after the catch, I left the camera rolling and got a clean plate. For the sixth shot, I already had the hammer in hand and moved my arm back slightly acting like I had just caught it. And for this shot, we also used the leaf blower to create some wind. And then for the seventh and final shot, I used my drone and flew it backwards through an open area in the forest and this was the shot I used for when the hammer flies by the camera. Then I took all of that footage and brought it into After Effects. Alright, first I'll start with the effect where the hammer is lifting off of the ground. So I have my slider shot added to a new composition. I right-clicked that layer, went to track and stabilize, and hit track camera. After that was done analyzing, you can see here on the ground, it created some track points. Mine were a little hard to see, so I came over and increased the track point size. Then around the spot where my hammer is going to be on the ground, I clicked and held down the mouse and selected a group of track points. Then I right-clicked that group of points and selected create solid in camera. Then I played through my scene and used the solid as a reference to see if it got a good track. After making sure the track was good, I went ahead and deleted the solid since I don't need it. After that, I brought the first hammer green screen element into the comp and stacked it on top. Then added the key light effect and keyed out the green. After that, I hit G on the keyboard to bring up the pen tool and created a mask around the hammer to get rid of the edges of the green screen and the wood that the hammer was sitting on. I then made sure the hammer layer was selected and came up and selected the pan behind tool. This allowed me to adjust the anchor point of the hammer. I brought it to the middle so that when I adjust the rotation of the hammer later, it will rotate from that point. After that, I came over and selected this box right here to turn the hammer into a 3D layer. After that, I hit P on the keyboard to bring up the position of the hammer and adjusted the X, Y, and Z until I had the hammer positioned where I wanted it in my scene. Next, I went ahead and created a shadow for the hammer. To do that, I selected the hammer layer and hit Ctrl D to duplicate it and renamed the bottom layer shadow. Then I added the drop shadow effect to that shadow layer. I also went into this effect and selected shadow only. I then made sure the shadow layer was selected and hit M on the keyboard to bring up the mask and deleted it. I then created a new mask around just the ground and bottom portion of the hammer where I wanted the shadow to be. I also hit F on the keyboard to bring up the feather of this new mask and changed the amount to 80. After that, I adjusted the opacity and softness of the drop shadow effect until the shadow looked like it belonged in the scene. Next, I animated the position of the hammer and shadow so it looked like it was lifting off of the ground. So, I brought the position of the hammer up and at beginning of the clip, I hit the stopwatch to create a keyframe and then went to the end of the clip and adjusted the Y position until the hammer was at the point I wanted it to be above the ground. I then held Shift and hit R to bring up the rotation so I could animate this as well. At the beginning of the clip, I hit the stopwatch for the Z rotation and left it at 0. Then went forward about 2 seconds and adjusted the Z rotation to be plus 3. Then went to the end of the clip and created one more keyframe for the rotation, this time at around negative 20. I then selected all of the position and rotation keyframes and hit F9 on the keyboard to turn them into easy ease keyframes. Now the hammer looks like it's levitating off of the ground and rotating. I then keyframed the position of the shadow to slightly move along the ground as the hammer is rising. I also brought up the opacity of the shadow layer by hitting T and keyframed that to start at 100% at the beginning of the clip and drop to around 50% at the end. I also keyframed the softness to increase on the drop shadow effect so that the shadow becomes softer as the hammer rises. I also made sure to turn on motion blur for both the shadow and hammer layers. And then that was it for this shot, it was definitely the most involved. Now I'm going to go over the second and third shot more quickly which uses the same technique. For the second one, I have the shot of the forest added to a new composition. Then I added the shot of the hammer tilting on top of that. First thing I did was right click the hammer layer and went to time and selected time reverse layer. Now it looks like the hammer is tilting up. Then I went into time again and selected time stretch and changed it to negative 45. This was to speed up the tilting of the hammer since when I filmed it I went kind of slow so that the movement would be smoother. Then I used the key light effect to key out the green and created a mask around the hammer. I had to keyframe the mask a bit while the hammer was tilting because you could see my arm in the shot. After I was finished with the mask, I turned the hammer into a 3D layer. I also rescaled it to the size that I wanted it for my scene. Then I keyframed and animated the position of the hammer to raise into frame, pause for a second, and then fly by the camera. So I created a keyframe at the beginning of the comp with the hammer at the bottom of the frame, went forward to the point where the hammer stops tilting, and created another keyframe here where I wanted the hammer to stop rising. Then went forward about one second and created a keyframe with the hammer still in the same spot, and lastly went forward only four frames and created a keyframe here for when the hammer flies past the camera. I also selected these last three position keyframes and turned them into easy ease keyframes. And after that last thing I did was come over here and turn on motion blur for the hammer and then had the final effect for this shot. The third shot was the drone one and this effect is a combination of the first two effect shots. So with the drone shot in a new composition, first thing I did was 3D track the footage. Then I took the same green screen element of the hammer tilting from the last shot and added it to this comp. I went into the last composition and copied the hammer element and then pasted it into this one. I opened up the position, right clicked, and then went down to reset. I also unchecked the stopwatch to completely reset the position. I used the part of this clip where the hammer is not moving and was facing the camera. Since it was already a 3D layer, the hammer is tracked into 3D space for the drone shot now. I just had to go through and create new position keyframes. And I did it the same way as I did the hammer tilting shot where I animated the Z position so it flies by the camera. So I brought the hammer way back in Z space so it started at the tree line in the background. Created a new keyframe here and then went forward about 12 frames and adjusted the Z position until the hammer passed by the camera. Then I trimmed that hammer layer to start at the first keyframe and end at the last one. After that, I made sure motion blur was turned on for both the hammer layer and the composition and then that was it for this shot. Now the last effect is the shot of me catching the hammer. So I have that shot in a new composition and broken into two parts. Me catching the hammer and then the clean plate that I layered underneath it. I created a mask on the layer of me catching the hammer so that you can't see my wife throwing it to me. I keyframed this mask and adjusted it to where the hammer appears only about three frames before it lands in my hand. Now it looks like the hammer is appearing and I'm catching it. Next thing I did was go into the first effect composition and copy the hammer green screen element and then pasted it into the hammer catch comp. Then I brought up the scale and rotation on the hammer layer and reset them just like I did for the last shot. After that, I adjust the scale and rotation so that the green screen hammer matched the size of the real hammer. I then positioned it a little in front of the real hammer and then trimmed the green screen hammer layer to end one frame before the real hammer appears. After that, I hit the stopwatches for the position and Z rotation when the hammer was at this point. Then went back eight frames and trimmed the layer here. And after that, I adjusted the position and Z rotation bringing the hammer back to start at the trees just like I did in the drone shot. And again, made sure motion blur was turned on and then I had the effect of me catching the hammer. You can speed up the rate at which the hammer flies in by bringing the two position keyframes closer together and then shortening the layer. After all that, the very last thing I did was add in the shot of me from the front. Then I put all of the final shots together and that gave me the finished effect. All right guys, that's it for today's video. Thank you so much for watching. I really appreciate it. I wanted to say thank you to those of you who have stayed subscribed to my channel over these last few months while I haven't been uploading. I do want to let you know that starting with this video, I'm going to be back on a more consistent schedule. So keep a lookout for some more videos that are going to be coming in the next month. Again, thank you guys so much for watching and I'll see you in the next one.