| Realization of a 3D rendering accompanied by animations and visual effects of a Star Wars Outlaws wallpaper.

🎬 Audiovisual production: https://www.carlierjulien.com/gallery/starwarsoutlaws

Overview 🔎

Star Wars Outlaws is the first open world video game relating to the univers of Star Wars, scheduled for release in 2024. It is published by Ubisoft and developed by Massive Entertainment studio in collaboration with Lucasfilm Games and Disney. Players will experience a story across the galaxy as the character Kay Vess, whose time window is set between the events of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi (episodes 5 and 6 of Star Wars, respectively).

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The intention behind making this project was to render the official poster of the Star Wars Outlaws video game come alive and animated using visual effects and animations.

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Process 🛣

In order to realize this project, I went through several well-defined stages.

 1. Realization of the scenarios (3D, VFX, Animations, Editing) in order to clarify the direction of the project and to know all the elements to be produced.

 2. Creation and configuration of the composition within After Effects: dimensions of the production (1920x1080 px), choice of the number of frames per second (60 FPS), duration (30 sec.).

 3. Cutout of all the elements of the poster through After Effects in order to constitute the plans of the 3D part. Deletion of elements, additional adjustments and retouching were necessary to perfect the plans, using Photoshop.

 4. Insertion of the plans previously cut in the 3D space, and configuration of the camera and its path.

 5. Creation of the various animations.

 6. Design of the visual effects (VFX) using plugins.

 7. Editing of the production: General color corrections and details enhancement.

 8. Assembly of the production on Premiere Pro: Insertion of the composition, research, addition and editing of the soundtrack.

 9. Production export (H.264): 1 video file (.Mp4); 2 cover pictures (JPG & PNG).

Audiovisual production details 🎞 

🎞 Composition

  •  Dimensions: 1920x1080 px.

  •  Frames per second: 60 Fps.

  •  Duration: 30 seconds.

  •  Editing: 3D editing with a shot by 2-nodes camera.

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A division by 2 of the poster’s dimensions was carried out in order to adapt it to the 1920x1080p resolution. Finally, the style of the composition is based on the principle of the "looped video".

🪄 Photo retouching

   ○ Noise reduction

   ○ Deletion of the title

   ○ Deletion of the snow

   ○ Deletion of flying entities (spaceships and creatures)

   ○ Reconstruction of certain parts hidden by elements as part of the realization of the various plans for the completion of the 3D rendering

When making the cutouts in order to obtain the different plans to create the 3D part of the production, it was necessary to proceed retouching to faithfully reconstruct the plans behind each cut element.

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On the other hand, the removal of snowflakes had to be carried out in order to add it as a visual effect in the audiovisual production and thus avoid perceiving the aspect of an image when viewing it.

✂ Cutouts (from the foreground to the background)

    1.  The title of the game

    2.  The levitating motorcycle

    3.  The two characters

    4.  The rounded space in the foreground

    5.  The closest parts of the middle plane

    6.  The furthest parts of the middle pane

    7.  The set of spaceships split between the foreground and the background

    8.  The creatures in front of the sun

    9.  The moon

    10.  The background (sky and planet)

✨ Effects & Elements

   ○ Color grading

       • Color corrections

       • Slight details enhancement

   ○ Visual effects (VFX)

       • The light indicators of the suitcase carried by the robo

       • The eye and the red button of the robot

       • Appearance and twinkle of the stars

       • Snowfall

       • Breath of the wind

       • Sunshine

       • Firepower of the spaceship engines passing on the right

       • Green missiles fired by the TIE Fighters

All the elements and effects were made in After Effects by hand and using plugins.

⚙ Animations

   ○ Camera

   ○ The robot and his coat

   ○ Kay Vess and her creature

   ○ The moon

   ○ The flying creatures in the background

   ○ The levitating motorcycle

   ○ The Empire destroyer (spaceship)

   ○ The TIE Fighters (spaceship)

   ○ The X-Wing T-65 (spaceship)

   ○ The spaceship on the right

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All the animations were made by hand, some of which required additional cutouts in order to animate a very specific element without hindering other elements (eg: the characters).

🎵 Soundtrack

"Star Wars Outlaws - EPIC Trailer Music Cover" from Jeremy Brauns.

Takeaways 📣

Unlike all of my previous projects, the realization of this one asked me to move objects along the Z axis (depth) taking into account the increase of speed and size of them as they get closer to the camera. Thus, this is an aspect that I was able to perfect and to understand the settings to assign within After Effects to obtain suitable results from a physical and realistic point of view.

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This production also allowed me to develop a new type of visual effect: the firepower released by a reactor.

Julien Carlier Productions

2023