What are Visual FX?

A visual effect is the integration of live-action footage and generated imagery to create environments which realistic, but would be dangerous, costly or simply impossible to capture on film. Visual effects using CGI has become increasingly common in big-budget films and have also recently become accessible to amateur filmmakers with affordable animation and compositing software being available. A Visual effect is basically digitally manipulated live action footage. The use of computers to add or remove anything that was not originally in the shot would be classed as an visual effect.

There are various softwares which specialise in visual effects such as Auto Desk Match Mover and Adobe After Effects. 3D modelling programs are also needed if using an animated character or object within a scene.

There are different techniques used in visual effects aswell including things such as Motion Tracking, which will be the method I shall be using to create my animated piece. This allows the insertation of computer graphics into live action footage with correct position, scale and orientation by using tracks on points of the film.

Green screens is another method of creating visual effects by compositing two images together, the chroma keying is set to pick up a colour and remove it, creating a transparancey. For example if you wanted to film a person and give them a different background, you would film them infront of the green screen and then make the green transparent, ready to place the remaining image onto a new background.

Physical simulators are also useful in the Visual FX industry as they're softwares which allow simulation of the way bodies of many types are affected by a variety of physical stimuli. They are also used to create dynamical simulations without having to know anything about physics. Physic engines are oftern used in high budget films such as 2012 which involve natural elements like flooding water.