Creating a virtual sky in After Effects: My Process and Reflection

By Giovanni Peresson 27/04/2023

Watch Here

Concept:

This week I wanted to try out something different. I wanted to create something from scratch by myself not using any real-life footage, it did take a while to come up with my final idea but after searching through websites like Pinterest I settled on creating a sky, more specifically a view of moving through the clouds. To make it more alive I originally planned to use stock footage of a plane or jet or something of the likes.

for this, I would experiment with a new tool I found in After Effects called CC particle world which would allow you to virtually create particles in a 3 world that could be applied to your timeline. There are many uses for these including but limited to, fire, smoke clouds, and much more. when researching this topic I found this which sums up my plan: "The most important thing to remember when creating particle systems is to experiment and have fun." (Perkins, 2010, p. 45).

---

My Process:

I started off in Photoshop and I wanted to create a simple light blue background that I would later use to overlayer the clouds layer on top of. I started off with a simple 1920 x 1080 background and then used the square tool to create an overlay which I could then edit. I selected blending options

and checked the gradient option where I would then create a light blue to an even lighter blue gradient across my image. I rotated the gradient direction so that the bottom would be lighter and the top darker to replicate the sky from a sky view. This would later serve as my background in the edit.

The first time around in after effects I added my sky and then created a new layer on top of it where I added the particle world. I messed around with it really just trying out myself and seeing what works and what doesn't. At the end of my first attempt, I managed to create something that

somewhat resembled a cloud using the bubble mode but there were some significant issues for example the gravity they were falling down too quickly as well as the size and being to actually see the bubbles. On the still image it looks alright but there was still a lot of work to be done

On my second run at it, I started fresh and first worked on the particle movement before anything else so I stretched the producer size the fit across my frame and set the animation to the direction

axis as well as set the particle type to the line. I also added an extra layer where I set a camera so that I could adjust my lens size more accurately to give a more convincing cinematic look to it.

I figured out you could actually use an image as your particle so I sourced a cloud png on google images which I used as my particle. I lowered its opacity decreased the movement speed and gravity of the particles and then increased the generation rate of them. This created an effect where it looked like the clouds were approaching the camera and going passed them.

The last thing I did which was quite simple was to add the plane but after looking through stock footage I couldn't really find anything that suited what I wanted to accomplish so what I had done is I searched birds instead and found the perfect green screen animation of two bald eagles which I

used in Premier Afterwards. I used the ultra key tool to remove the background and did just a little of motion to keep the birds more or less centered when they are moving using keyframes. The clip was a little too fast so I slowed everything down using optical flow to keep the smoothness and that had also added a little bit of motion blur to the birds which I actually quite liked.

---

My Reflection:

I was quite pleased with the final results of this project I had used and combined some of the techniques used in previous blogs and the added research definitely made a significant impact on my thought process when doing this.

Rather than just creating a static image I wanted to give it some life and tell a story, even if the project isn't a narrative I still feel as if it is important to always keep this a significant part of any project, this quote from Brinkmann, R. (2008). The Art and Science of Digital Compositing sums it up quite well "Good compositing requires not only technical knowledge, but also an understanding of aesthetics, design, and storytelling" (p. 19).

This technique definitely has its purposes in the real world and especially when it comes to tv and film, maybe no this exact scene I created but in films such as Top Gun: Maverick (Kosinski J. 2022) or in Interstellar (Nolan C. 2014) a scene from an outside perspective of a plane or in Interstellar the scene where we see the sparks on the window of the spacecraft. Another way this technique could be used is to add light or even heavy smoke to scenes to create a more mysterious feel for the viewer and in reality, the possibilities are endless.

One thing that definitely took me by surprise where render times, a 30-second clip came out to around 4gb and took around 10 minutes to render, I do have a powerful computer but still struggled and even playback was impossible, I could pretty much only see individual frames. What I have learned is that optimization is something to keep in mind things like maybe increasing opacity and lowering the number of particles being produced from the origin could help but ultimately in the end but to anyone who is thinking to attempt something like this I wouldn't really try to do something like this on a regular unless you're willing to sacrifice quality. This was also something that took me by surprise in a previous blog where I created a bullet using Blender but this render was much quicker to do and a longer clip what I have noticed in After Effects vs Blender is that in Blender live playback was possible although the final render took far longer it was a few hours so it really comes down to picking your poison weather you want to sacrifice your playback or render times if you're where deciding on whether to create something like this on Blender or After Effects.

---

References:

"The most important thing to remember when creating particle systems is to experiment and have fun." (Perkins, 2010, p. 45)

"Good compositing requires not only technical knowledge, but also an understanding of aesthetics, design, and storytelling" (Brinkmann, R. (2008). The Art and Science of Digital Compositing. Morgan Kaufmann. p. 19).

Top Gun: Maverick (Kosinski J. 2022)

Interstellar (Nolan C. 2014)

---

Watch Here