| A CreativeCOW Combustion Tutorial |
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Bimo Adi Prakoso
Indonesia
©2005 Bimo Adi Prakoso and CreativeCOW.net. All rights reserved.
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In this tutorial, CreativeCOW.net Contributing Editor, Bimo Adi Prakoso introduces further techniques for Creating the Old Movie Look with Combustion. Read on to continue this tutorial with Part 2: Creating Scratches and Dirt.
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In my previous tutorial, I explained about the steps on creating old movie look without any plugins, in Autodesk® Combustion®. In the last paragraph, I mentioned about dirt and scratches. The following steps that I'm about to explain give just one of so many ways to create dirt and scratches in order to complete the old movie look.
So, we'll start with some experimentation creating scratches and dirt, by using Paint in Combustion®.
Start with the Scratch
Instead of having the scratches on the same layer with the footage, I'd prefer to have a new paint layer so I can have more freedom in changing the paint objects. Right-click on the Composite and choose New Layer.
Opt Paint as type of layer, and make sure the Transparent option is checked. You may give the layer name at this stage or rename the layer later.
Select the Stroke Freehand Tool (under the Toolbar Panel), and set the brush size to 2 (under the Paint Controls Panel).
You may select white or black color to create the paint stroke. Here, I'm using white color so we could see the effect clearly.
Zoom out the viewport, so you can see a larger outer composite area. In this way, we will create a long paint stroke that crosses the composite area. Try to create a slightly wavy stroke. As you see, real scratches aren't always straight. See the result below. The rectangle shows the length/size of the paint stroke.
Rename the brush stroke as, for instance, Scratch01 and apply a Box Blur operator to it. Set the radius to 0.70.
Then, insert Add Noise operator and set the Amount to 100%. Make sure that Monochrome and Animate options are checked. Leave other options by defaults.
The result should somehow show as following. The paint stroke will have blur edges but the noise is sharp.
Select Scratch01 then Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V to create a new paint object and rename it as Scratch02.
Then, change the position of Scratch01 and Scratch02. Feel free to place them at any place you prefer. Mine is something like this. (White rectangle is Scratch01 and yellow rectangle is Scratch02)
Using the same technique as previous tutorial, add a random value through the expression browser to X Position and Y Position to Scratch01.
But remember, the value should be limited to some distincted area as shown. In my case, inside the expression, I set the min X value to 25, max X value to 200, min Y value to -200, and max Y Value to 700.
Feel free to experiment with different values inside the expression for Scratch02. You may experiment with Y Scale value or add random expression to it.
So, I've created two scratches on my composite.
When playing it back, I have those two scratches moving in random direction as assigned through the expressions, but their movements are limited to the values set inside the expressions.
On some cases, having 2 scratches are not enough and those scratches I have in the composite are strictly sharp. In order to have some trails and create other blurry scratches, I can use Motion Blur operator to create such effect. But in Combustion® 4, there's a new operator that will make this process much easier. It's called Timewarp operator.
With Timewarp operator we can have trails so it's kinda having more scratches on our composite. Just simply add a Timewarp operator, and set the following parameters.
The final image with completed scratches (with Timewarp operator applied) will look as following.
Completely Dirty
The same method could be applied in order to create some dirt. Create couple of small paint strokes, move them accross the composite area using random value of X and Y Position inside the expressions, have different X and Y Scale values in the expressions (it's better to also use +/- value so it won't create typical dirt shapes), and have them rotated randomly in 360 deg, again using the expression.
Last Words
This is just one of so many ways to have old movie look effect. On some cases, you may also create a capsule of this old movie look, save it, and then apply it later on to other footage(s) when you need it.
Again, hope that this would be a useful reference.
Keep on combustioning!
Feel free to ask questions or comment on this tutorial in the Autodesk Combustion forum at Creativecow.net.
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