Learning Library - Sharing Open Developments | Blauw Films

This is a database of tutorials, guides and the R&D of our Productions.

Information surrounding how you can monetise your independent film and make it self-sustainable through the use of Intellectual Property, assets, merchandising and licensing deals.

Self-Sustainable Filmmaking

Approaching the financial side of your IP

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Information surrounding how you can monetise your independent film and make it self-sustainable through the use of Intellectual Property, assets, merchandising and licensing deals.

Self-Sustainable Filmmaking

Approaching the financial side of your IP

Create a photo-realistic 3d-rendered digital monitor with RGB diode split. Use these advanced compositing techniques to create realistic screen replacement for your film, video or animation.

Photo-realistic RGB Screen Replacement

Make digital screens in CGI

Learn different easy techniques for relinking missing textures in Cinema 4D. If you have a texture error, learn how to use the Project Asset Inspector to connect all textures to your shaders.

Re-Linking Missing Textures in Cinema 4D

Troubleshooting common texturing errors

Learn how shutter speed and motion blur have an incredible effect on photorealism in 3d rendering. If you want your cgi to look photo-realistic make sure there is motion blur. Control the look of the 3d-render motion blur with the shutter curve in Chaos Corona.

Everything Motion Blur in Chaos Corona

What does speed look like in CGI?

Create a photo-realistic night vision effect in your 3d render based on infra-red depth vfx. This tutorial covers advanced night vision visual effects techniques for Cinema 4D with Chaos Corona and After Effects.
Download the free night vision setup to create your own scene quickly.

Realistic Night Vision Camera in Cinema 4D and After Effects

Depth-based IR-Light Intensifier Effect

Create photo-realistic oceans in Cinema 4D with Chaos Corona using Vector Displacement Maps for dynamic looking 3d-renders of oceans. Make your 3d render look cinematic with ocean vdm and the volume material for realistic water vfx.

Making realistic Oceans in Cinema 4D

Photo-realistic Oceans in Cinema 4D

In this tutorial we cover a variety of compositing techniques for adding hardware 3d-objects into live-action film footage. The object is rendered in Cinema 4D using Chaos Corona and composited in After Effects. In this example we are compositing THINKER designed by Edon Guraziu for the short film Syntactic Labyrinths.

Compositing THINKER Close-Up in Syntactic Labyrinths

Blending realistic 3D hardware in After Effects

In this After Effects tutorial we cover how to composite a realistic 3d-object with a screen into your live-action footage. The 3d-model for RECEIVER that was designed by Edon Guraziu is rendered in Cinema 4D with Chaos Corona. The tutorial covers the use of multi-pass compositing and adding small details that add to photo-realism.

Compositing RECEIVER into Syntactic Labyrinths

Realistic Screens in your 3D-renders

In this tutorial we cover techniques for replacing dummy props with tracking markers for photo-realistic 3d-models using Cinema 4D, Chaos Corona and After Effects. We're looking at an example from Syntactic Labyrinths.

Compositing THINKER by Edon Guraziu

Compositing THINKER by Edon Guraziu

Learn how to composite a spaceship into a realistic space background in After Effects with this Blauw Films tutorial. In this tutorial we will cover an example from Syntactic Labyrinths.

Compositing Venus with a Spaceship

Realism Techniques for Outer Space scenes

In the first episode of Conversations we speak to Director and producer, Florian Thess. We recently worked on the visual effects for his latest short film, Florence. The effects consisted of creating the HUD for a futuristic A.I. android. Afterwards we take the time to discuss about his future work, Unreal Engine 5, the film festival process and his personal company Specular Films!

Film Directing and VFX with Florian Thess

What it takes to become a Director

Learn how to create convincing 2D cell shading in Chaos Corona Renderer with the use of self-illumination materials and albedo textures.

2D Cell Shader Animation in Chaos Corona

Music Video for César Ivan Filio

In this tutorial e will cover how to track your footage with a planar tracker inside Mocha. Afterwards we will go through some simple techniques to make your footage look as if it's from a tv. Finally we will cover how to use our free CRT TV diode alphas.

Realistic CRT Screen Replacement in After Effects

Compositing and Blending Breakdown

In this tutorial we will cover a variety of techniques you need to successfully composite 2D Fire cards into your footage. The only lighting used is an Astera LED Tube. The rest is made in After Effects. We will also cover how to add fire reflections to your glass objects in your scene.

Burning Down your House Interior in After Effects

Compositing Fire in moving Shots

Controlling the amount of film grain on your footage and deciding on where the grain shows up can be done with a super simple After Effects set-up. The set-up is so simple that I made a project file available for free on the Artstation Store! Grain Control is a set of pre-composed layers and simple sliders that will give you the fine control over your grain assets. Adding grain to multiple shots in a project can be time consuming and difficult to get consistency for.

Control the amount of Film Grain + Free Project File

How Professionals Add Film Grain

Today we have a tutorial on the grainy film look we created for King Khamen - Powertools. We released this music video about a year ago and there were some interesting techniques we used both during the shoot and post-production. The footage was shot on a Canon 60D using 1970s mouldy Minolta lenses. The combination gave strong light leaks and incredibly soft footage. This base works great for adding film grain and creating a rough 16mm film look.

Creating a Rough 16mm Film Look

Emulating film grain

Star Wars has a pretty unique look when it comes to Space Cinematography. The infinite amount of stars present in each frame add to the "softer" look of the planets and the higher shadow values. In today's tutorial we're gonna look at lighting this scene while taking inspiration from Akira Kurosawa. We will also create a simple impact shockwave on the planet.

Lighting our Star Wars/Kurosawa Tribute

Color coordinated Lasers

Star Wars has a pretty unique look when it comes to Space Cinematography. The infinite amount of stars present in each frame add to the "softer" look of the planets and the higher shadow values. In today's tutorial we're gonna look at compositing star assets from our Organic Starfields Pack into our Star Wars render.

Compositing Stars just like Star Wars

Creating bright starry space scenes

When you have a variety of Cloud assets that you want to combine into a larger panorama, it's good to have some knowledge of color matching. This is an essential skill in any vfx pipeline. I believe this is also great knowledge for the Camera department and anyone interested in Sky-replacement.

Color Matching your Sky Plates in After Effects

Grading and Compositing Tips

Have you noticed that most Graffiti Decals are not made by Graffiti artists? Together with artist BRIKS we solved this problem by bringing you The BRIKS Graffiti Scrapbook. This tutorial will cover how to use graffiti alphas to add a new level of realism to your urban environments!

Adding Graffiti Decals to your Environments in Cinema 4D

Bringing Life to Urban Spaces

This workflow session was lots of fun! I go through the compositing process of my recent Pyramid of Light render based on the artefact from Yu-Gi-Oh!. The Pyramid of Light is a quartz crystal object that catches and scatters lots of light. I used Quixel Megascans to create an ancient Egyptian tomb including a statue of Anubis.

Compositing the Pyramid of Light in After Effects

Finishing touches on 3D Renders

In this tutorial we will be going over some compositing techniques in After Effects. We will be using a Depth Pass to create light rays and atmospheric perspective. We will also be rendering out a Caustics Pass and a Bloom and Glare pass to give the image that extra punch. Throughout the process I jump back into Photoshop several times to make judgement calls on composition and detail control.

Compositing a Space Kitty in After Effects

Creating space art

In this tutorial we will be going over how to use the Corona Volume Material with a bright white Absorption color and a Uranus Texture map as a Scattering output. We will be covering how to generate a realistic looking atmosphere for this planet. We will also be covering how to use disks with Multi-Instance Cloner objects to create the thick rings filled with particles.

Making a Photo-realistic Uranus in Cinema 4D

Creating 3D planets in Space

In this tutorial we will be going over how to use the Corona Volume Material with a bright white Absorption color and a Venus Texture map as a Scattering output. We will be covering how to generate a realistic looking atmosphere for this planet. We will also cover some basic compositing techniques in After Effects including some Post-processing and Color Correction.

Making a Photo-realistic Venus in Cinema 4D

The brightest of them all

I recently participated in the Billelis hosted Skull Competition. It was my first time using his Skull assets in a more naturalistic way. To avoid UV unwrapping the assets I decided to figure out a believable procedural skull texture. The bone and teeth are made up from similar textures that use several noises and some layer masks. A convincing bone material is not complete until you play with Subsurface Scattering so be sure to enable that when rendering!

Procedural Skull and Teeth Material in Chaos Corona

Subsurface Scattering and Natural Roughness

In this tutorial we will be going over how to use the Corona Volume Material with a bright white Absorption color and a Neptune Texture map as a Scattering output. We will be covering how to generate a realistic looking atmosphere for this planet. We will also cover some basic compositing techniques in After Effects including some Post-processing and Color Correction.

Making a Photo-realistic Neptune in Cinema 4D

Scattering Light through a 3D Planet Volume

In this tutorial we will be going over how to use Colorama in After Effects to manipulate your texture map into the colors you're after. Mercury is a complicated planet to render as there is no "true" photographic reference available. We use the Narrowband filtered images as a color reference and find a middle-ground between the classic monochrome Mercury look and the vibrant color maps. After setting up the scene in Cinema 4D we will cover camera-settings, lighting and rendering. In After Effects we will cover some simple compositing techniques using Luma Masks.

Making a Photo-realistic Mercury in Cinema 4D

Creating 3D Planets that look natural

Gaby, our editor, will be breaking down her professional workflow when it comes to working in Adobe Premiere Pro. She will cover her folder structure before starting a project and how she organises her bins and sequences inside of Premiere.

Intro to Setting up a Premiere Project

A professional editing workflow

Today we will be looking at how to add starfields to your night time shots. When shooting a night time shot it's almost impossible to expose both to your actors and the night sky. It is however quite simple to composite your star assets into the scene. We will cover a little bit of motion tracking followed by using Cinema 4D and Corona Renderer to check the exposure of the stars. We will be using our own Starfields that have been extracted from real NASA stars.

Advanced Starfield Compositing in After Effects

How to add Natural Sparkles in your Sky

Hello, today this is the fourth video in our Lighting Mastery series in which me and Cinematographer Erick Alcaraz will explore the different styles of lighting throughout art. In this video we will explore the naturalistic lighting from Andrew Wyeth. We will use Cinema 4D and Corona Renderer to set up the lighting on a scene. We start with a recreation of Andrew Wyeth' Christina's World. From a dark environment we start by lighting the house with two 5000K 100KW Area Lights representing our Sun. Afterwards we will control the contrast ratio by using a grid of Sky Panels at 5600K shining through a large diffusion frame.

Learning Wyeth Lighting Techniques - Lighting Mastery

Dark and Soft Environments

This is a personal preference technique that varies from artist to artist. My personal method includes using the Bezier Warp effect with a -30 to -60 value on the Vertices to squish the edges before making a 2.35:1 crop of the composition. Afterwards the use of Shift Channel will separate the Red, Green and Blue channels. With the Optics Compensation effect we can subtly add some Chromatic Aberration to the edges. Never too much, just a touch to add to the "lens imperfections". Finally an Adjustment Layer with a masked Rounded Rectangle will create a blurry feathered edge of our shot. This blurry vignette uses an instance of Camera Lens Blur with the Aspect Ratio set to 0.5 and a subtle Exposure effect that lowers the Gamma Correction.

Post-Processing CGI Footage 2.35:1 Aspect Ratio

How to make your CG renders look better

In this tutorial we will be going over the Atmosphere by using photo-textures as reference to guide a Fresnel - Gradient. We will also use NASA textures for the globe and we will use the Corona Layered Material to create a separation between the land and the water. We will also go in-depth of the Corona Volume Material to create the atmosphere.

Making a Photo-realistic Mars in Cinema 4D

Creating Planets with 3D Displacement

In this tutorial we will be looking at Jupiter. Our photo-realistic approach of this planet uses Cinema 4D and Corona Renderer. The techniques involve using the volume material and the volumetric scattering settings inside the renderer. In your renderer you should be able to replicate the effect following similar techniques. We also cover how to set up your textures correctly and how to match the lighting and camera settings from the NASA Voyager 1 space probe.

Making a Photo-realistic Jupiter in Cinema 4D

Creating the Planet's Stormy Surface

Hello, today this is the third video in our Lighting Mastery series in which me and Cinematographer Erick Alcaraz will explore the different styles of lighting throughout art. In this video we will explore the diffused and color blocked lighting from Edward Hopper. We will use Cinema 4D and Corona Renderer to set up the lighting on a scene.

Learning Hopper Lighting Techniques - Lighting Mastery

The Atmospheric Urban Life

This advanced tutorial will cover how to add realistic thunder clouds into your shot that includes 3D-Motion. I will go through my process of my Cinema 4D scene set-up including the lighting in Corona Renderer. I will also work in After Effects to make a final composite of animated RAW Clouds assets and finally a CC Glass + Trapcode Particular rain simulation.

Thunder Clouds with Volumetric Lighting in After Effects

Rain Drops and Lightning Strikes

Hello, today this is the second video in our Lighting Mastery series in which me and Cinematographer Erick Alcaraz will explore the different styles of lighting throughout art. In this video we will explore the soft and diffused lighting from Rembrandt van Rijn. We will use Cinema 4D and Corona Renderer to set up the lighting on a scene.

Learning Rembrandt Lighting Techniques - Lighting Mastery

The Golden Atmosphere

In this tutorial we will have a look at how to create your own realistic Harry Potter title sequences. You're free to design the look based on anything you'd like but in this tutorial we'll cover the techniques in Cinema 4D and Corona Renderer, the export settings and the final compositing inside of After Effects.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - Opening Titles Redesign

The Dark Typography of Witchcraft

Hello, today this is the first video in our Lighting Mastery series in which me and Cinematographer Erick Alcaraz will explore the different styles of lighting throughout art. In this first video we will start with the seventeenth century Italian artist Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. We will use Cinema 4D and Corona Renderer to set up the lighting on a still life.

Learning Caravaggio Lighting Techniques in Cinema 4D - Lighting Mastery

The True Chiaroscuro

In this tutorial we will have a look at how to create your own realistic Harry Potter title sequences. You're free to design the look based on anything you'd like but in this tutorial we'll cover the techniques in Cinema 4D and Corona Renderer, the export settings and the final compositing inside of After Effects.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - Opening Titles Redesign

Opening to one of the Most Iconic movies

In this tutorial we will be covering three different methods for creating lasers in Cinema 4D and Corona Renderer. For our short film Syntactic Labyrinths I had to figure out ways for making a laser scanline effect. Depending on your framing you could either achieve this with a thin Area Light with a 100% Directionality, or by creating a Light Material that uses an Ambient Occlusion pass as a mask.

Making Lasers with Ambient Occlusion Masks in Cinema 4D

Unique Chaos Corona 5 Technique

Corona Renderer for Cinema 4D has an incredibly strong Layered Material. I've been experimenting with it in the last few months and have found several uses for it ranging from adding grunge to your models to creating a highly detailed planet map with water and land separation. In this tutorial I will first cover how to use the Layered Material to create a dirty/used skateboard texture. Here we will cover simple Photoshop techniques for creating a grungy diffuse texture and a luma mask. We will also cover how to create a planet earth that divides the ocean and the landmass. This layered material is built up of two other layered material that even creates a separation of a texture based on a height map.

The Basics of the Corona Layered Material

Stacking and Blending Multiple Materials

In this tutorial we will be covering a simple technique for adding decals to your 3d models inside of Cinema 4D. The process makes use of the Shrink Wrap Deformer. Stickers and Decals only require two channels to work. A Diffuse channel and an Alpha channel.

Adding Realism with Decals in Cinema 4D

Time to Sticker up everything

Today we will be looking at a very simple way to add "epic" to your already cool looking shot! Knowing how to add a moon to your sky realistically is an essential vfx skill to have from low-budget to high-budget productions. By adding a moon to either your day or night shots you will quickly increase the value of your shot thanks to this new point of interest.

Realistic Moon Compositing in After Effects + FREE Moon Assets

Adding Natural Beauty to your shot

Are you having troubles with screen replacement? Are you working with footage that has bad green-screen and no motion-trackers? Then this advanced TV Screen replacement tutorial will cover all the things you need. I go through a step-by-step workflow of how I got to 80% of a finished shot and then I finish the remaining 20% along with you. This is an incredibly useful skill to have in your After Effects tool-belt.

Advanced TV Screen Replacement in After Effects

With a Sad Greenscreen

This advanced tutorial will cover how to do sky replacements on shots that have 3D camera movement. I will go through my process of motion tracking the footage, looking at reference images and composing the final shot with overcast cloud assets.

Realistic Sky Replacement for your Moving shots

Blending multiple cloud plates

In this tutorial I'll teach you how to check the exposure of your star assets to match your backplate. We will also have a look at a simple day for night effect that cover some techniques I learned in Photoshop.

Realistic Starry Nights Replacement in After Effects

Color Grading and Compositing Breakdown

In this Cloud Pack tutorial we will be going in-depth to some basic compositing techniques for Sky Replacement in After Effects. Cinematographer Erick Alcaraz sent me some footage for which he wanted the mood to be changed. On set you're never able to control the clouds. So even when you have beautiful clouds on location, you might have to resort to sky replacement. In this tutorial we will tackle 3 different examples.

The Basics of Sky Replacement in After Effects

Compositing and Extracting Mattes

While working on the visual effects for LA KE BO by Loan Favan, I noticed how with drone shots it's sometimes difficult to tell how fast you're going. Due to flying through clean air, there is little parallax close to the camera. Using the Blauw Films Cloud Pack together with some 3D tracking gives us some layers of puffy clouds to fly through.

Flying through VFX Clouds in your Drone Footage

Adding Depth to your Footage

In this tutorial we will be going over the Atmosphere by using photo-textures as reference to guide a Fresnel - Gradient. We will go into how to create the Rings of Saturn and we'll use some basic Xpresso Nodes to control 2 seperate Corona Suns. Finally, we will go over camera-settings and we'll finish it off by compositing in After Effects.

Making a Photo-realistic Saturn in Cinema 4D

Creating Impressive 3D Planets

If you've been having difficulties with creating an alpha from clouds, this tutorial should cover a technique in Photoshop to get clean results.

How to Mask out Clouds in Photoshop

Extract Soft Assets from the Background

In this tutorial we will be going over the Atmosphere by using photo-textures as reference to guide a Fresnel - Gradient. We will also use NASA textures for the globe and we will use the Corona Layered Material to create a separation between the land and the water. We will also go in-depth of the Corona Volume Material as we will use it to create our water and clouds. Finally, we will go over camera-settings and we'll finish it off by compositing in After Effects.

Making a photo-realistic Earth in Cinema 4D

Recreating Our Home Planet

Learn how to create a stunning 3D Poké-ball from scratch using Cinema 4D. Learn about 3D modelling and scene setup while following step-by-step instructions. Perfect for beginner artists.

Create a 3D Poké-ball in Cinema 4D | 3D Modelling - Timelapse

Looking back at the Original Concepts

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^[1]: Dreams of Blauw are any form of crystallised thought based on honest expression. Sometimes they linger a shade of blue in your after-image.