Most muzzle-flash footage will do a good job, as long as you know what type of weapon it belongs to and how to integrate it properly. But that’s the key word: “good.” And “good” isn’t always enough for clients or the VFX Supervisor.
From sourcing affordable materials to constructing skeletons, shaping bodies, designing facial anatomy, and ensuring proper manoeuvrability for the puppeteers, everything had to be done by us.
The key here is the clean-up. Usually, the original muzzle flash from set is used as a reference, and depending on the type of muzzle flash, the paint-out work can be easier or trickier.
From that moment on, every clone of that node becomes part of a network. Update one? They all update. Simple, clean, and synchronized.
That’s the reality of shots like these: What looks simple at first glance often hides a deep pile of layering, texture blending, roto, tracking, and testing.
Learning Compositing, without quotes, is about learning the why.
