Position the muzzle flash by parenting the particle control Point to the tracked Point and resetting its transforms.Now this 3D point can be used to transform the particles in 3D. Select this new Point in the Transform From property located in the Particle Placement Position settings dropdown.Add the Atomic Particles effect, then add a new 3D Point layer.Use the Freehand Mask tool to draw a rough muzzle flash shape.For this, we created a custom stylized 3D muzzle flash using the Atomic Particles effect. These usually last for a single frame, but in this case, the flash will require more detail as we’re creating a freeze time effect. Please note that the track doesn’t have to be completely accurate, as none of the objects we’ll be adding will be as precisely aligned as this cylinder.Ī crucial element of any gunfire effect is a muzzle flash. You can also manually animate the Point layer to improve the track further. If you play your footage back, the result still may not be perfect, but the cylinder model should stick onto the footage quite well. Check the alignment on various frames throughout the shot and adjust as needed.Now adjust the position and rotation of the tracked Point to align the cylinder with the prop gun barrel.Add a Wireframe effect to the model so it becomes see-through.Reset the model’s transform settings so it snaps to the right position and then scale it to the correct size.Drag the model onto the timeline, then parent it to our 3D Point layer.Uncheck Center Anchor Point, as we’ve already set the Anchor Point where we want it.
This model is included in the downloadable project file. To check the quality of the track, we imported a cylindrical 3D model that we exported from Blender.
With our points tracked, our camera solved, and our scene created, we can select a tracking feature on the barrel of the prop gun and create a 3D Point layer from it.
(Here’s a tutorial showing you how to use Foundry’s 3D Camera Tracker). This tracker worked perfectly for these small details as it included the actor’s slight movement in the track, allowing the effects to stick right onto the gun. To track the visual effects elements onto the prop gun, we used Foundry’s Camera Tracker in HitFilm Pro. We then opened the resulting Composite Shot in HitFilm and keyed out the green screen (Need to know how to take your CamTrackAR tracked footage from your iOS device and composite it into HitFilm?). The tracking data from CamTrackAR worked perfectly for matching the digital environment created in Unreal Engine with the movement of our scene, giving us great flexibility to customize the background.
We filmed our footage on an iPad using our free iOS app CamTrackAR, which records 3D camera data along with the video footage. The first step in creating this effect is to create a 3D camera track.