Grunge Layers. For you Freddy.

This is in response to Freddy Lopez (@FreddyiWonder) who asked on Twitter:

"For the walking dead toy story intro you made, how did you make the floating textures? e.g.: the particles"

I figured it would be best to try to explain it in a blog post. So here we go.

First off for those of you who haven't seen it, check out my Walking Dead / Toy Story mashup here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfGh1qOYBwo

I tried to emulate the floating particles you see in the Walking Dead TV Intro.

They float somewhat subtly (and not so subtly) in layers in front of the camera.

Layers is the key

Now you can do this in After Effects but I did this in Hitfilm Ultimate 2.  I took a grunge layer like this one:

I got this out of the texture file that came with Action Essentials II, but you can do an image search for similar images. Look for grunge or even pain splatter.

I switched the image to negative (or in Hitfilm use Invert) so now all those little cracks and bits turn white.

Adjusted the brightness and contrast so those whites become more evident.

And then utilizing 3D space in Hitfilm I duplicated it and separated the layers.

I changed the blend mode to Add so the black would become transparent. I then played with the layers, added some softness, increased opacity, and then moved the layers around, made them move left to right, up and down, etc. This way the particles would move around as the camera would move in and out of them in front of what ever image I wanted.

Now I just kinda threw this together because I wanted to get a response to you Freddy, but if you'd like I'll find the time to put together an actual video tutorial to better explain and how to possibly achieve the same effect if you don't have After Effects or Hitfilm.

Patrick