| Realization of a 3D rendering accompanied by animations and visual effects of a Star Citizen cover picture.

🎬 Audiovisual production: https://www.carlierjulien.com/en/gallery/starcitizen

Overview 🔎

Star Citizen is a video game developed by Roberts Space Industries. This offers an ultra realistic gaming experience, across the universe.

Due to the extremely advanced design of the game, its official release date is not set. On the other hand, the game is accessible in the form of an open Alpha with a regular deployment of updates.

The creation of this project was based on an animated rendering of a cover image from the game.

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), approximate 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: Slight general color corrections.

 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: 24 seconds.

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

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The style of the composition is based on the principle of the "looped video".

🪄 Photo retouching

   ○ Noise reduction

   ○ 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.

✂ Cutouts (from the foreground to the background)

    1.  Spaceship in the foreground

    2.  Spaceship in the background

    3.  Foreground of the landscape

    4.  Second plan (right part) of the landscape

    5.  Second plan (left part) of the landscape

    6.  Third plan (right part) of the landscape

    7.  The sky

✨ Effects & Elements

   ○ Color grading

       • Color corrections

   ○ Visual effects (VFX)

       • Small stars

       • Medium-sized stars

       • Spaceship booster (x2)

       • Smoke trail (x2)

       • Effect of heat (booster)

       • Optical flare (booster) (x2)

       • Optical flare (spaceship in the foreground)

       • Optical flare (sun)

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

⚙ Animations

   ○ Camera

   ○ The two spaceships

🎵 Soundtrack

"New Babbage" from Pedro Macedo Camacho | Star Citizen Soundtrack.

Julien Carlier Productions

2023