Second, with the exception of a few still graphics, like cracks in the floors, the assets are all pre-keyed with included alpha channels which nearly all editing and effects programs recognize automatically. (Vegas, the one exception, does require you to tell it that there’s an alpha channel, after which time it works properly.) This means that you can concentrate on sizing, opacity, and other concerns rather than blending.
One of the big elements that Kramer includes with this pack that seems to be almost a last minute addition is realistic sound effects. While there are only twenty of these effects, they are literally 20 of the most crucial sound effects, like muzzle blasts, shell casing bounces, and explosions. Having these assets easily available is such a huge help! (You will likely want to modify these a bit in post, so that, like your VFX, no two sound effects sound exactly the same.)
To prepare you for using these elements, there’s about 60 minutes of training you can go through to get a feel for the creative uses you might want to explore. (There’s also a plethora of training related to these sorts of things on Video Copilot’s website.)
To make a basic video involving shooting a hole in the wall of a kitchen complete with drywall blowing out of the wall and a shell casing ejecting out of the airsoft Beretta I was holding literally took just a little over twenty minutes. You can, of course, tweak things indefinitely, but, the point is, it’s easy to get things up and running immediately.
High resolution still images like this windshield bullet hole can be added to your video footage in post. Just remember to put in some form of tracking dots when shooting.
Variety
While we’ve found distributors of some of these types of assets in a variety of collections, we’ve never discovered package that had the variety of assets that this package has all in one place, much less approaching this price point! While we’ll break down some of the other great assets that are in this pack in this section, there’s one element that really stands out in this set right from the get go: shell casings. Hard as it may be to believe, finding high quality shell casing animations is next to impossible. Even companies like FXHome, that have a lot of gunfire and bullet hit asset collections, don’t have high rez shell casings in any of their sets. As such, that was one of the first things that immediately drew my attention to this great set. (They include a pistol-style casing, for pistols and submachine guns, and a rifle style casing for hunting and sniper rifles. Additionally, they include a full speed and a slow-mo version of the casing, in case you’re doing overcrank effects.)
Now for a bit more of an overview of the collection. There are twenty categories of effects, ranging from muzzle flashes and couch hits to explosions and fireballs to still assets like bullet holes and broken concrete. All told, there are 500 pre-keyed elements in this set, which is incredible! With creativity, the combinations you can achieve are almost limitless. For those of you who want some slow motion effects, many of the effects were shot in 48 to 60 fps. This means that they’re already in a 50% slo mo, so you can slow them down further with a package like Twixtor or you can speed them up to normal speed easily.
In addition to the official content, there’s the bonus sound effects content I mentioned before, which is hugely useful. The 20 sound effects Kramer cherry picked are really incredible. You could easily augment these with sound effects collections like Sony Pictures’ Sound Effects or Digital Juice’s collections, but it’s great to have these high quality selections included with this pack.
Due to the amount of options that are packed into this set, we are planning to use this set as our main workhorse in both the Depleted: Day 419 prologue and the Depleted feature film. It’s already allowed us to easily test effects passes on our lower rez cameras to get a feel for some of the capabilities we can have down the road. Additionally, we were able to use the assets in this set for some of the mockup posters for Depleted. (Speaking of which, it would be great if Kramer released a Still Imagery version of this set for graphic designers. It could have high-rez stills of all the assets for folks who are making movie posters, web designs, and any other still work. Some of the still assets that are currently here can be used for that, but it would be super cool to have something that’s specifically designed for still imagery people. Using still grabs from the 2K set should be high enough quality and then releasing the Still Graphic set for $49 or $59 would be a great way to expand the buying market!)
This composited FX picture used ground smoke, muzzle smoke, muzzle fire, and ash from Action Essentials 2 for this mock-up poster for Depleted. (Photography by Nate Eckelbarger, graphic design by Jeremy Hanke.)
All told, the variety of this set is top-notch, especially considering this is the first set that’s been released by Video Copilot.
