Recreating Doctor Strange's "Seeing the future" moment in Avengers: Infinity War

[samsonp35336707]

Hello, 

I was hoping that someone could direct me with this very specific question... I just started using After Effects for a project I'm working on because I'm trying to recreate this effect or something similar... here it is for reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jo_TDvQ9Qyg

I was wondering if anyone knew of any effects in AE that could help achieve this? Or any other relevant suggestions or tricks? The footage I'll be working with will probably be a still shot if that helps.

Hopefully this is something other people are curious about as well. In any case, thank you in advance for any ideas.

[OussK]

this effect required a lot of technique and skills from using particles plugin to masking and tracking and color correction... so if you are interesting in doing a hight level CG effects try to watch Videocopilot tutorial you will find a lot of helpful tutorial https://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/ 

[samsonp35336707]

Thanks OussK for the link. This looks like a super useful tool overall for learning AE. However, if I could narrow it down at all, what I'm mainly interested in is the head motion. So, going off of what Mylenium said, it sounds like what I really need is to learn the 3D tracking and rotomotion and the fast-forward time smear effect, no? Granted I'm not wrong here, is there a tutorial or plugin in the website that will help with this specific goal?

[Mylenium]

This is easily the work of a team of five people for several days. You need to match the real scene with 3D tracking and rotomation of a mesh dummy, create the animation of the rings, simulate the smoke and particles, compose it all together, including the fast-forward time smear effect. All doable, but really, you have to know the techniques and steps. This is nothing you would slap together on a lazy afternoon. If you use a still, some of it could be faked in a simplified manner using masks, glows, fractal noise and all that, but it will still take time and patience to get it looking right.

Mylenium

[samsonp35336707]

Thanks Mylenium for the breakdown. Helps to clarify the path ahead. So I should have specified more in the post but what I'm mainly interested in is recreating the head movement, not so much the other effects. They would be superfluous for my purposes. With that being said, it sounds like what I need to learn is the 3D tracking and dummy rotomation and the fast-forward time smear effect (with multiple layers??) Would you know of any online tutorials that could set me on the right track? -S

[ShiveringCactus]

While the other replies are correct, if you only have a lazy afternoon, check out the echo effect. And try out the Echo Operator settings.  It's much more basic, but might get you started

[samsonp35336707]

Thanks! I'll check it out!

[Rick Gerard]

If you are using a still image you will need to separate the image into layers, arrange the layers in the After Effects comp world, make them 3D if you need realistic parallax shifts, learn about particle systems, fractal noise, keyframes, masking, blend modes and probably a bunch of other techniques. We would be better equipped to provide some useful help if we knew how much experience you have with After Effects and what 3rd party plugins you have or are willing to purchase. I could probably reproduce the glowing energy field and floating actor using Trapcode Particular, Fractal Noise, some track mattes, a background layer, a couple of layers for fractal noise, a layer or two for Particular, and a layer for the actor. There are a half dozen other plugins, some free like Video Copilot's Saber, that could also be used to generate something similar. 

Let us know what you have to work with and how much you understand about layering, masking, and compositing and we can probably point you in the right direction.

[samsonp35336707]

Hi Rick, thanks for your reply. I have a pretty meager understanding AE, but I get some of the basics like composite layering and keyframes (masking I also understand but it's more iffy in practice). I also don't have any plug-ins. If you refer to my reply to Mylenium my purposes on AE don't involve getting entrenched in the nitty gritty. What I'm really after is recreating that head movement/motion from a tripod shot. Anything you can recommend that would help achieve that would be appreciated!