HELP New, and needing some software recomendation

[TMerry]

Hi All, I'm new here. Been directing and editing in FCP for years.

I'm working on a short and have very little budget so feel it would be an insult to
ask a qualified VFX artist to work for free SO

I have some time on my hands and about $500 and wanted to try my hand
at learning enough about VFX to add to my supernatural thriller I'm directing.

WHAT SOFTWARE IN MY PRICE RANGE would you recommend for this effect??

1. The dark spirit will be coming out of the table top and rising straight up in front of a girl who is eating dinner.(straight up through her placemat)

2. It's a long wooden table and the camera will be dollying pull-back (at table level) while panning up to track the spirit as it rises up to about 7 feet, standing on table.

3. I was planning on either A) green screening an actor as the spirit in all black, rising up
behind a box that is covered with green fabric as well, and repeating the Pull-back and try to match the motion, and then adding it in post to the
shot of the girl at the table.

4. then adding some kind of smokey or twisted effect to the image of the dark spirit to take away the definition of its edges and make it partially transparent.
or
B) Creating the dark spirit entirely in CG.


Here are some real ghost picture that are close to what I'm trying to enulate:
Although I want my dark spirit to have MUCH more details
http://www.hauntedamericatours.com/g...oom_ghosts.jpg
http://www.hauntedamericatours.com/g...tles_Ghost.jpg
http://www.hauntedamericatours.com/g...host_Photo.jpg

I really appreciate your help and suggestions on the best way to pull this off
and what software I should aquire

Best!

[TMerry]

Wow, this has been here for days and no answers.
Do I need to know he secret handshake? LOL!

Any help would be great,
thx!
-Tommy

[forkazoo]

Well, you have a few options. For the most part, they are all well discussed in the archives. We get a lot of new people visiting the forums, so "what software should I buy/use/learn," is a topic that has been extensively discussed at many points. A lot of the most knowledgeable folks here have already contributed to various episodes of this discussion, so you can learn a lot by digging through the forum archives.

Shake was recently discontinued by Apple, but can still be found for under $500 while vendors clear out their stock. pfmatch was even released for free for Shake, so you can do limited 3D tracking and compositing on a tight budget.


For 3D, check out Blender. It's free, but quite capable. It even has a built in compositor, but if I had the choice, I'd much prefer to use something like Shake for the compositing.

Welcome to vfxtalk.

[TMerry]

Thanks forkazoo, I get what you're saying totally, and I really appreciate your advice. :-)

I'll focus on the areas of the forums that discuss the software you mentioned.

[Gravy]

3. I was planning on either A) green screening an actor as the spirit in all black, rising up
behind a box that is covered with green fabric as well, and repeating the Pull-back and try to match the motion, and then adding it in post to the
shot of the girl at the table.

B) Creating the dark spirit entirely in CG.

You're going to have terrible problems recreating exactly the same camera move unless you have a motion control rig. You'd be best off just shooting the spirit as a static plate then projecting it onto a 3d card in nuke to get the perspective matching etc.

Or, as you said create it entirely in CG. Then you'll get max control over what your shape looks like etc. You may want to look at particular or fumefx. Fumefx is probably the better choice but will be slightly harder to learn. I'm not sure if it's the best 3d particles package to use but I've had a few friends use it and said it was fairly user friendly.

[TMerry]

Thanks Gravy, I'll look into "particular & fumefx. But when when of you guys, that does this type of VFX all the time says something is hard... it worries me :-D

PS, I noticed the quote on your signature yesterday while looking around the forums - good one!

[micjayger]

you could probably make it work in after effects! There are lots of different ways to create smoke too! you might find something helpful at this website! www.DryfireProductions.com

[TMerry]

you could probably make it work in after effects! There are lots of different ways to create smoke too! you might find something helpful at this website! www.DryfireProductions.com

Thanks Mic, this post is kind of old and I finished the film already


Best!
-T