Cloning effect: HOW?

How do you do that cloning effect like the one on Ryan W's homepage? I tried e-mailing him, but I got a mailer-deamon back.
Does anyone know of a tutorial on how to do this? How about energy blasts? Are their tutorials for those available? So, yeah. I need help.

 

The cloning is just creating masks for the subject wanting cloned and compositing them together. The energy ball as seen on Ryan W's site was just a short test he did. He wasn't basing that energy ball on something already existing. I believe he just rotoscoped it over his hand and added a horizontal beam flare.

 

you can look at this clip, its un rotod due to bad exposure and some other factors (like time available) but if you look closley you can see the matte traveling between the two and when the sabers cross the matte. might help you get a better idea for what your doing.

Here in Sorenson 3 Quick Time

 

Hey Shawn, though the video quality isn´t so bad, the clip was quite cool, I bet if you roto the blades, the masking wouldn´t be visible and it would look quite good. The timing and movement was great, also the slowmotion sequence worked for me

And to answer the initial question of this thread:

It´s always a good idea to write which programs you are working with, so the people can get a bit more specific with their answers. Here´s a methog I can recommend for After Effects.

It´s similar to Shawn´s clip as it seems.

Record the same scene twice without moving the camera during the process to maintain the same perspective, lighting etc. When done you should have two clips, one with the actor doing his stuff and the second clip with the same actor doing something different as he´s the clone you want.

Now import both clips into After Effects and place them both in the timeline. Having done that, you need to apply an animated mask (supposing you know how to work with AE, but you always have the manual to look things up) to the upper layer og the two. Apply and animate the mask so that the upper clip reveals the actor from the lower clip giving the impression of having the same actor twice in that scene. Maybe add a little edge feathering so the border is hopefully not noticeable at all. That´s pretty much it. As you can see in Shawn´s test clip, most importantly you have to match the movements, paths and timing of your actor in both clips to make it look real.

Even if you don´t have After Effects this basic method might help you with other programs also.

 

Here is a tutorial for AE.

Cloning In After Effects

All the best,
Neil

 

This discussion (linked in the tutorials thread) reviews several techniques for doing several types of cloning.
You'll just need to apply the ideas to whichever software you happen to be using.

Have fun!

 

Shawn, I agree, that was really cool, you should roto that.

~werd

 

Shawn, what effect did you use on that slow-mo part? it looked like more than just slow moton, it seemed like there were frames skippied or something wierd- it looked really cool and i'd like to know how you did it.

 

predinator: That tutorial was pretty horrid.

Sure it describes the basic but is so full of other errors and omissions it hurts me.

- it doenst mention that you can animate the masks
- for some reason it doesnt do the 3 part group in one comp
- insanely he *renders out* two layers comped and compes on a 3rd on the RENDERED FILE!!! (there is a *reason* you can put a comp in a comp, lads!)
- no mention of feathered edges

But yeah as the most BASIC tutorial... it works.

/Z

 

Well if someone really wants to roto that clip i will give them the two clean sides to it. As for the slow motion, it was simply slowing down the footage with frame blending in FCP. Though the two peices of footage actually run at different speeds throughout the shot. I had to do a lot of little slows and speed ups before the big slow down and swing to get all the movements matching. We shot that in about 3 minutes so we didnt take time to perfect timing.

But here is the trick i figured out while matching the timing and everything, long before rotoscoping is to lay the two peices of footage on top of each other and set the top one to 50% opacticy. Then you will be able to work on timming problems etc without dealing with the masks etc. (seemed easier to me since the masks would be wrong if I did those first cause the initial timing was so far off)

 

wow, i didn't realize that you can slow/speed up the two clips to get the times to match up even if the choreography didn't quite.

interesting...

 

right i did that in my editing software, Final Cut Pro. Thats what I was talking about with the 50% opactiy for one layer so I can see how things are lining up, then i find spots where a speed up or slow down wont be obvious and cut it then slow just that section down/speed it up etc.

 

I dont have a tut made yet but it is in the making and i made a clone of my self today and was wandering if any one would check it yout for me its in wmv format sorry i havent had toime to put a mov in yet but if i get good resaults ill try to get more time for making the tutoril. the movie is at:

Clone Test

 

Got it to load. The cloning looks clean enough, didnt notice any matte lines etc. Only thing I would note is that there is no real fear of actual contact. When I filmed the shot with my actor we had markers in the grass so he knew where to swing etc, and the saber tip passing right under his chin was a little luck and a little ingenuity in the speed adjustments.

The one neat thing about cloning is you can have people do stunts etc that would otherwise be very dangerous, but since you dont have to worry about accidently smacking the guy your fighting in the head you can go all out.