🪄 Hogwarts Legacy by Julien Carlier

🪄 Hogwarts Legacy

Julien Carlier

3D Renderer

Animator

Video Producer

Adobe After Effects

Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Premiere Pro

Cover picture of the Hogwarts Legacy Audiovisual Production made by Julien Carlier Productions

Realization of a 3D rendering accompanied by Animations and Visual Effects of the Hogwarts Legacy Wallpaper.

Overview 🔎

Hogwarts Legacy is a video game developed by Avalanche Software and published by Warner Bros. Games and Portkey Games, released in 2023. This is an open-world action-adventure and role-playing game inspired by the Harry Potter universe.

The objective behind this project was to bring to life an official poster of the game: by providing a 3D effect, by animating the different creatures, the central character and the vegetation, and by adding visual effects.

Process 🛣

In order to realize this project, I went through several well-defined stages.

Realization of the scenarios (3D, VFX, Animations, Editing) in order to clarify the direction of the project and to know all the elements to be produced.

Creation and configuration of the composition within After Effects: dimensions of the production (1920x1080 px), choice of the number of frames per second (60 FPS), duration (30 sec.).

Cutout of all the elements of the poster through After Effects in order to constitute the plans of the 3D part. Deletion of elements, additional adjustments and retouching were necessary to perfect the plans, using Photoshop.

Insertion of the plans previously cut in the 3D space then configuration of the camera and its path.

Creation of the various animations.

Design of the visual effects (VFX) using plugins.

Editing of the production: Intro & Outro, color corrections and details enhancement.

Assembly of the production on Premiere Pro: Insertion of the composition, research, addition and editing of the soundtrack and sound effects (SFX).

Production export (H.264): 1 video file (.Mp4), 2 cover pictures (JPG & PNG).

Audiovisual production details 🎞

🎞 Composition

Dimensions: 1920x1080 px.

Frames per second: 60 Fps.

Duration: 30 seconds.

Composition: 3D editing with a shot by 2-nodes camera.

The composition is based on the principle of a “looped video” in its design, apart from the intro, and thus being able to last indefinitely. This can be observed in the repetition of the path taken by the camera and the animations and visual effects.

A division by 2 of the poster’s dimensions was carried out to adapt it to a more conventional resolution: 1920x1080p. The high FPS number choice has meanwhile allowed to render the production very fluid to watch, it brings a more realistic and captivating side.

🪄 Photo retouching

Deletion of the lightning

Deletion of the dragons and ghosts

Reconstruction of certain parts hidden by elements as part of the realization of the various plans for the completion of the 3D rendering

When making the cutouts in order to obtain the different plans to create the 3D part of the production, it was necessary to proceed retouching to faithfully reconstruct the plans behind each cut element.

On the other hand, the removal of the visual effects initially displayed (such as lightning for example) also had to be carried out in order to add these same effects but in a different and animated way within the production.

✂ Cutouts (from the foreground to the background)

1. The central character, the rock and skeletons (foreground)

2. The rocky mound with the little spider on the left

3. The vegetation to the right of the little spider

4. The passage lit from the inside on the right

5. The ghosts

6. The mountain face with the cave housing the giant spider and a part of the vegetation further down, behind the passage on the right

7. The game title

8. A part of the vegetation with the dead tree behind the plan 6, on the right

9. The whole of the part below before the lake and including the village on the left

10. The dragons

11. The first mountain overhang after the village, on the left

12. The castle, the lake and the mist

13. The second mountain overhang after the fist one

14. The tower in the distance, on the right

15. The sky

✨ Effects & Elements

Transitions

Motion Design

Color grading

Visual effects (VFX)

All the elements and effects were made in After Effects by hand and using plugins.

⚙ Animations

Camera

Appearance of the central character

The character's cape and his arms

The dragons

The skeletons

The ghosts

The little spider

The giant spider

The dead tree

Certain trees and vegetation

All the animations were made by hand, some of which required additional cutouts in order to animate a very specific element without hindering other elements (eg: a hind leg of a spider).

🎚 Sound effects (SFX)

Whoosh

Wind blowing

Thunder

In the objective to add a deeper dimension to the production, I wanted to insert, in addition to the soundtrack, a slight sonority of wind accompanied by the rumble of thunder.

🎵 Soundtrack

"Hope Fades" from Chuck e. Myers "sea" | Hogwarts Legacy (Original Soundtrack).

Takeaways 📣

It was the most ambitious project on which I could work until now especially through the Animations part. I indeed sought to go further in the realization of certain animations to try to achieve body movements as realistic as possible according to the situation in which the subject finds himself.

It is to be taken into account that these animations are made from pictures (2D) and that they therefore do not allow to restore a hidden face of an element during its movement (eg: the wings of the dragons during their flapping).

Example 1 : depending on a displacement and taking into account the earth’s gravity (like the dragon which turns around in the sky to then dive).

Example 2 : depending on multiple coordinated movements (like the giant spider emerging from its cave).

Julien Carlier Productions

2023

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