DreamWorks Animation - Kung Fu Panda 2

Po Finds the Truth – Image courtesy of DreamWorks Animation

This post was written by Sarah Wise for Red Giant's Blog. See original post.

When Kung Fu Panda first hit cinemas in 2008 we fell in love with martial arts misfit Po the Panda and the Furious Five as they fought and defeated the evil Tai Lung. But this year the challenge for the teams at DreamWorks was how to create the second installment and build on the successes of the first film.

In Kung Fu Panda 2, not only have the characters developed, but the film itself has upped its game with more explosions, more chases and more visual excitement – all thanks to the dedicated VFX teams at DreamWorks.

Lead After Effects animator at DreamWorks, Daniel Hashimoto and his close-knit team of AE artists have brought amazing impact to some of the film’s most memorable sequences, using Trapcode Particular and Form. 

Po Finds the Truth (2) – Image courtesy of DreamWorks AnimationDaniel told us: “One of the film’s most dramatic sequences – “Po Finds the Truth” – pulled out all the stops. In this sequence, which involves a village on fire near the snowy woods, Form and Particular were used to create snow, embers, smoke clouds, and a highly-stylized flame effect. The customization and versatility of Particular made it a very powerful tool to have at our disposal. Our Visual Development Artists painted the stylized effects which we wanted to bring to life in the 2D sequences, but not just in 2D, but also in stereoscopic 3D**. And since Particular, Form and Horizon all work within a 3D environment, they were ideal for the look we wanted to achieve.

** Check out Episode 59 of Red Giant TV to learn about using Trapcode Software to create Stereoscopic 3D effects.

Learn more about DreamWorks Animation HERE.

Check out this amazing downloadable preset that tries to mimic this effect.

Maintenance release: Form 2.0.2 and Lux 1.2.2

A number of fixes including better OBJ import. More info and downloads

Also, here is a new tutorial on C4D OBJ to Trapcode Form.

Maintenance release: Form 2.0.1 and Lux 1.2.1

We've fixed some bugs and added an "Invert Z" option for the OBJ's in Form 2.0. Read more and download the update here.

Cassidy Bisher

Impressive work by Cassidy Bisher. He set out to explore the new .OBJ support in Trapcode Form 2.0 and created this lovely piece.

Cassidy notes:

"Some of the models that were imported into form were designed by Teddy Bodien (my partner). They were then exported to the right format, .obj, by Breyon Bradford (my other partner)

Harry Frank gave us insight on how to prepare the .obj file. The simple solution is to subdivide the 3D object more. Form renders a particle at each vertex. So, if you can add more and more subdivisions (more vertices), the object will have more visible particles in Form. 

People are always asking me how I do my camera moves. For me it depends on what I want to do... do I use nulls and parent the camera to them or use the simple orbit camera tool. Sometimes it's a combination of both. When I first started using AE my mistake was using to many keyframes for the camera position, the animation would feel clunky & awkward. It wasn't until I started using the graph editor in AE to tweak the keyframes in combination with using less keyframes that the animation started looking more smooth, flowing and graceful.

Effects used were: Trapcode Form, Trapcode Lux, Knoll Light Factory (I put a box blur on the knoll light factory layer to make it less harsh and more organic), a 4 color gradient with only around 10 to 20 percent opacity was used on top of all the other layers.

Music Artist: Aphex Twin (Petiatil Cx Htdui)" 

DUBSTEP GUNS by Corridor Digital

Amazing production values in this fun, creative action clip by the awesome guys at Corridor Digital. Uses Trapcode Form for the lasers. Music by Klaypex. Check out the making of:

 

 

And finally a tutorial by Vinhson Nguyen on creating the laser in After Effects using Trapcode Form: