Looking for guide to adding ants to my footage!

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dominichicks

Active member
Hi - unusual request here - I'm relatively new to after effects, but a new project I'm working on requires some quite advanced effects on AE, which I'm unprepared for.

I'm shooting a narrative short in which the characters (and their surroundings) are infested with ants.

Something a little like this.... (except my shots wont be rotoscoped)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XT4ObtDs0yc

The ants can look like drawings (as in the clips above) or look realistic - at this point, both could work. Whichever is easier and looks better.

Any ideas? Or do I have to start pouring creepy crawlies on my actors!
 
Make it easy on yourself. Wide shots with scratching but no ants in the shot; it's just understood. Close-ups of scratching with real ants on their skin.
 
Initially, I'm with Jordan. There is NO substitute for the real deal if everyone's cool with the methodology. But since said methodology is, well, a bit creepy for most people, I'd opt for post, but what you're describing may be more than you'd want to bite off. But who knows, so here goes.

First, shoot live plates of ants against white. First, shoot a lot of ants. For the wider shots of ants, you can use that as a layer that you can mask, chop up, and then make as "plates" you can overlay in pieces in Multiply mode, maybe even tracking them to the broader surfaces of your actors: Arms, faces, legs, backs, etc. Good for environments, too, using corner pin distortion.

hen, shoot some individual ants - don't pan to follow them, let 'em just crawl. Motion-track and stabilize them individually. It'll look really weird, but the goal is to have an ant walking, but not moving laterally. You can crop that down and use that as a particle, then use a particle system to generate a huge swarm. I'd recommend the Trapcode Particular plugin for this, as you can have time offsets for each particle so they're not all in "lock step." This would give you more control over the flow of the swarm and its density. You can also hand-animate a single ant and use this same trick, rather than the stabilization of a live ant.

However, all this will still require motion tracking of your actors in order to make the ants look like they're moving on actors who, themselves, are moving. Also depends on what kind of bar you have for realism. None of this will be easy or fast, regardless of technique...including just dumping ants on your actors. if you're shooting handheld, get ready for motion tracking nightmares! :-)
 
Doesn't look like there's an easy solution... Will probably go for Jordan's suggestion and use a few live ants, and then maybe just some beads for long distance shots, or maybe some simply AE effects.

Thanks guys.
 
They have to be ants? Maybe they could be biting flies or something? Then you could use a particle system without having to worry about nailing them down to a surface.
 
I agree on the close up things mentioned before.
On wide shots, you can use trapcode particular or form and choose a small ant picure (needs alpha channel) as your sprite/particle base form. You can then produce hundreds or thousands of ants and you'll have some kind of control on the arrangent in 3D space and their movement.
 
The difficulty is that the film is set entirely inside a car - which means most shots will be close up. I think I'll go with less of a swarm and more like 4-5 ants in each close up shot.

Would somebody be kind enough to run down how to use 'trapcode particular or form' for me for the long shots, and how best to animate 4-5 ants in close up shots?

Thanks in advance.
Dom
 
Humble advice: don't do creature interactions on humans in a short with close ups and little knowledge of VFX. I've worked on this stuff for TV shows with experts and it still ends up looking so-so. Unless this is a comedy, or very, very stylized... it's gonna look weak.

You could use particular for the wide shots, but it's more of a particle system... reacting to air/gravity than something that forms on to figures. You can do it, but some duplicated layers with some simple animations may also do the trick. I don't think form will help you here at all.

For particular, I just recommend finding some video tutorials or reading through the manual. It's a bit much to explain in one email. You have to learn all about particle systems and about 100 different knobs and switches to experiment with.
 
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