ShiveringCactus: VFX Tutorials's video: How I made my Star Trek battle in After Effects

For my earlier tutorial showing how to create a photon torpedo and have to automatically explode on impact (or rather "at the second keyframe"), I created a short skirmish between the starship Enterprise-D and a rogue Klingon bird-of-prey. It was all just for a bit of fun, but I ended up using lots of different techniques, so I thought I'd share here a quick explainer for everything involved. In this behind-the-scenes video, I talk you through where I got the models, how I used Video Copilot Element to animate them in After Effects. I also talk about how I made the decloaking effect, the Klingon disruptor beams, shield hit and finally how I used a custom map for the Shatter effect to break apart the bird-of-prey. Oh yeah, I also show how to use @BorisFXco Particle Illusion to create the nebula background and then slow down the particle animation without creating any jerking motions. *Get ShiveringCactus VFX as phone cases, T-shirts, mugs: https://www.redbubble.com/people/ShiveringCactus/shop* *Or buy me a coffee: https://ko-fi.com/shiveringcactus* *Links:* Project Download: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/0nk2pn0ceqm1kmefor4az/Explode-on-impact.zip?rlkey=cksqz0ueq4jx7n4dckc6em0tm&dl=1 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *Chapters* 0:00 Star Trek battle 1:32 Animating in Element 3D 2:40 Particle Illusion Nebula 4:06 Bird of Prey decloaking and firing 5:03 Custom Shatter Map