Terminator Vision

[Squid_uk]

Hey all!

I would like to attempt to create a 'different' intro for a DVD from a recent holiday I had.

What i would like to try and create would be a Terminator style vision where you see him scanning objects and people, I have had a look on google for some guides but cannot really find anything but did find some videos on Youtube but they are not very detailed.

I would like my intro to be similar to this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MeaaCwBW28&NR=1 where there is also all the different info scrolling down.

I am being a little hopeful or is it possible?

Software I have avalible:

Sony Vegas Pro 8
Ulead VideoStudio 11
Pinnicle Studio 12

[guns1inger]

The red can be done with a simple Hue filter in Vegas. The test can also be done easily with a combination of Text generators and png files for the grids etc. The difficult part is the outlines as he sizes up and analyzes objects. I have a couple of ideas for that, but I will try them out before posting.

[filmboss80]

Assuming you don't want to purchase Autodesk Flame...

Beyond the red hue filter, there should be a certain degree of posterization. Letters and characters can be title keys or alpha channel text graphics from photoshop or other image software. The animated movement of letters, however, will be a bit trickier with the limited software you have.

If you have access to AfterEffects, check out this link:
http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/2/905544#905562

Unfortunately, there is no plug-in "Terminator Vision" filter for Vegas.

[guns1inger]

You can get everything but the rotoscoping done in Vegas, and it looks pretty good.

Add your clip to the timeline. Add EventFX, and add black and white, brightness contrast and film grain. Push the contrast up to full, then increase the brightness slightly until it looks OK. Adjust the film grain to make it more subtle.

Next, go into the media generators and select Solid Colour - Red. Drag this to the timeline, then move it up so it is above the video clip. Drag the length out to match your video clip. Finally, change the composite mode of the red clip to Add. You should now have a pretty good looking red clip.

Again, go into media generators and add a white text on transparent background object to the timeline. Move this timeline up until it is above the solid red clip. Add some bogus text, set the font size, justification and position. Repeat and animate as necessary.

You should now have a reasonable mock up of the terminator viewpoint.

The most difficult part is rotoscoping the outlines. There is no simple way to automate this, and no nice way to reproduce it in Vegas. I did play around with duplicating the video timeline, then adding a Convolution Kernel effect to the plugin chain, changing it to Find Outline, and then playing with the composite modes. It works to a degree, however you have no real control over how it sees the outlines, so it is hit and miss.

[Squid_uk]

Guns1inger and Filmboss80 thank you soooo much!

Filmboss80 i will have a look at Autodesk flame and see if I can afford to buy it, meanwhile Gunslinger, thanks for going through it in more detail, do you think that with scoping it would be possilbe to choose the frame where i want to perform the scan import it into photoshop to create the outline then move it back into vegas maybe repeating this a couple of time to get the effect?

[guns1inger]

You could do it that way, and if you have CS3 or 4 you can import clips. One of the features of the terminator clip in T2 is that is does the scan while tracking, so the outlines move with the subject - i.e. they are longer than a single frame in duration.

[Squid_uk]

Hmm so it sounds like it would take a while to do

[guns1inger]

Not in photoshop. Use the magnetic lasso to speed things up.

[AlanHK]

See How to create Terminator Vision tutorial

[Squid_uk]

Thanks AlanHK I had seen that vid but I did not find that it had much about making the number and text part

[12Quidkidinnit]

Here's one I did ages ago. Well I was bored . . . . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fpbw2T1eOU

[Squid_uk]

Hey guys!

I've had a good crack at this and manage to achieve something but have come across another bump in the road, what I am stuck with is when the terminator is walking around and there is a compass that appears in the corner and it flashed the direction, I tried to make a compass in Photoshop with a transparent background, but when I place the image into Vegas it has a white background. Also I was wondering if anyone would could point me in the right direction with how to create the grid that appears and move around.

Any info would be really helpful!

[poisondeathray]

Did you see the checkerboard background in Photoshop when you did the compass? An easy way is to use the magic wand or magic selection tool and hit delete for the unwanted parts. What format did you save as? A good one to use would be .png to retain the transparency

For the grid, you could make an asset of the grid and use a shape layer in the shape of a "+" and keyframe the movement of the shape layer to move it. You want the "holes" between the grid transparent. With this new asset, you keyframe the size/scale from nothing to the final size to make it appear from nothing and grow to final size. You can adjust the transparency of the level to make it semi-translucent. If you're having difficulties doing this, just PM me, and I'll upload this for you; it only takes a few minutes in after effects to do.

One thing to remember, vegas has transparency off by default for clips with alpha channel, so don't forget to right click the asset => properties => alpha channel => premultiplied

EDIT: here you go it's 480x480 1:1 3sec
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=TVZ70AE6

[Squid_uk]

Poisondeathray I was saving the file in JPG and PSD but PNG has done the trick! But the way have made it is 2 images of the compass, but one image has part of it missing, then the idea was to have each image show one after the other to simulate it flashing, is there an easier method than this?

That grid you made is exactly what I am after! Is there any chance you could help me make one?

[poisondeathray]

You have the compass assets (2 png images) so one to do this is put the "main" big compass in the background (put it on a separate track, and scale it down, position it), then you overlay the 2nd image (missing part) and keyframe the opacity over time (actually in Vegas, you can use a compositing envelope to adjust the opacity over time) so it flashes in and out. You might add some effects like glow to make it look better.

You could do it right in your main video, or encode a separate asset. If you were to do it as a separate asset, you have to encode this to a format that retains opacity (either huffyuv RGBA, or QT animation codec with RGBA, I'm not sure if Vegas can do the 2nd one) - this is kind of like I did with the grid as a separate asset that you can drop right into any composition and reuse it for other videos or other segments within a video

I "cheated" and used After Effects for the grid (it has a grid plugin that makes this easy), but you can still do it with Photoshop + Vegas. You make a transparent background grid in Photoshop (white lines, but the "black areas" in between the lines are transparent). Make a separate layer as a big "+", thicker than the lines on the background grid. Make sure you make the "+" extra long and wide beyond the size of the background grid, because you are going to be animating the "+". Export those 2 as .png with transparency. Then take those 2 assets, and like the compass you put them on top of each other. You keyframe the top "+" layer to animate it. Again you can other effects to make it look better, and you can adjust the opacity of the entire layer to make the white bars semi-transparent instead of solid white

Similar to the compass, you can either do it right in your main video, or separately to make an asset that drops into your video. The benefit of doing it as a separate asset is that you can drop it in several times at different points in time more easily than manually having to do it each time the grid or compass appears.

[Squid_uk]

Ok mate i think i can do that but im having a problem trying to get the effect of the image starting invisible then quick zooming to the size i need, i managed to get it to move around with no problems!

[poisondeathray]

Ok you just keyframe the size over time with the track motion button on the overlay layer. So at time 0, the size is 0 and after a few frames, it "grows" up to it's full size. You want to do it over a couple of frames so it "pops" up instead of slowly growing...hope that makes sense

The toughest part, as guns1inger said earlier, is the outline flashing of the objects. Short of doing it manually, I don't know of any tips or shortcuts. I'm wondering if anyone else has any ideas or how you managed to do it?