Damages 2 Teaser

Recently I posted a 3 part series of tutorials on creating a shattering glass effect using Maxon Cinema 4D and Adobe After Effects. This is the project that inspired that tutorial. The brief was to animate promotional key art of a person with bloodied hands holding a brief case and finish with a glass shatter effect to reveal the name of the series, followed by the channel logo.

I used a series of position animations around the image, combined with flash frame close-ups of the bloodied areas. Once the full image is revealed it shatters to reveal “Damages 2”. Notice how before the shatter, a large specular highlight on the glass is revealed; I didn’t want any specular on the initial reveal but needed it for the shatter for a more glass–like effect. Rendering out the specular pass as part of a multi-pass render allowed me to fade up the specular only when it was required. One problem with the specular pass was obvious banding (a bug perhaps?) but this was disguised with a subtle noise effect in After Effects.

Notice also how after the initial shatter the image fades to reveal clear glass; I decided to do it this way to make the glass obvious and also to allow for a faux refraction effect created in After Effects using the Displacement Map Effect. Trapcode Particular was also used to add some detail to the shatter effect. These techniques and more are explained in the tutorial.

Watch movie (10 sec, 1MB)    Shattering Glass Tutorial