We need to talk about some compositing tricks we see regularly in anime. Most of these are fairly easy to apply, but very easy to miss. Simple things can add a lot of visual interest, so let's get into it! I know you'll love it! (^^,)
Letterbox speed lines are a very common element in anime, especially for emphasis and, of course, speed.
To make it, you get your shot in the compositor and add a blend/gradient texture.
The blend texture is then colorramped to create the letterbox/pillarbox mask for the lines. In this mask, add a cloud texture and make sure you scale it to stretch along the mask. Animate it at a fair speed and use a mix node or two to add it back over your shot.
Options:
1) Use a mix node with the mask to fade it over your shot. In other words, the mask determines opacity. This does present a bit darker, but is the quickest.
2) Use a Mix node on multiply for the black lines and another on add, for the white lines.
Very simple!! :D
A soft gradient is a very simple way to just add some atmosphere to a shot or boost the story.
To create one, simply add a blend/gradient texture to your compositor and rotate it accordingly. You'll quickly notice some ugly edges because of the rasterizing of the textures. To fix this, scale and ramp it to fill the frame.
Now, use colorramps to vary the dark and brightness as you mix the shot - remember, starting with less is better, so stay that hand! haha.
1) Multiply the texture over the image. This goes over the character you want to subdue or hide or minimize, etc. Don't let this go over your focus character just yet - remember, less is more!
2) Duplicate the ramp and Overlay it, but make the black a mid-gray. As in 0.5 for R,G and B. This will brighten up the focus area only. Remember to adjust the mix of these effects, so your result doesn't blow out or become too dark!
3) Duplicate the multiply ramp again for a little off-screen glare/atmosphere and make sure it's not too small or too bright. You use Add for this one - do not be afraid to make this one smaller than the overlay ramp in step 2 and reduce the mix further too.
You have to still be able to see your characters clearly with all of these applied. If you can't, it's too much. Now, you are more than welcome to further adjust the mixes and sizes of the ramps to get just the right feel! It's about communicating - emphasis and atmosphere. If it doesn't successfully emphasize of help the shot, then it needs adjustment.
My personal fav and also has a few options!
To add a white glow, you need to get the mask for the objects that will be "glowed". I prefer material index or Cryptomatte - depending on the engine of choice. The circumstances in which this is used, demands that you are able to select what you want and don't want, for transitions and emphasis.
Options!
1) You can use a dilate/erode node to feather the white over your objects
2) You can blur the mask and simply add it over.
An additional step is to add a soft blur to the final result. To do this, add another blur node and set it to a size of 1 and use a mix node to fade between it and the glowing version. This adds to that surreal vibe. Again, less is more.
This one is by far the simplest, but the most work.
A common part of every OP are memory shots. Whether they are images or video, doesn't matter. What matters is movement, layering and transitions!
How these often move are:
1) Camera motion
2) Animation
3) Images zoomed, panned and/or rotated
For the simplest approach, go with nr 3 or a mix of 2 and 3.
In the common case, you can do this in the VSE (Video Sequence Editor) with transform strips. You simply animate the scale, rotate and offset values to rotate your images while zooming in or out. Try to vary the rotation of every sequential image ito speed and direction. This just adds some freshness and interest to every frame. Of course, you can do them all the same if you're doing like a flipping through memory lane effect.
Make sure you use everything on Alpha Over, so that when you consider adding your transitional animation (such as a shot fading in, in the background, to be visible when the last memory fades), you can see it and it's seamless.
Very simple - just a little bit of effort and consideration gets you a stunning result!
Of course, you can render it out and add a blur to it (the VSE's blur is a bit slow imo). If you have a blazingly fast PC, duplicate and group the memory section and add a blur strip over it - all still alpha over and set it to 0.5 or 0.3 opacity, to get that soft glow. You can choose to use Add as your mix method, but I'd recommend just leaving it on alpha over, because it'll prevent it from blowing out.
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