Recreate the Look of 'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker' with These DIY VFX

The short trailer was shot, performed, produced, and post-produced by staff at FXHome using solely the tools available in HitFilm Pro, as well as the free edition, HitFilm Express. And the best part: they’re going to teach you exactly how they did it.

FXHome has released a tutorial series on their YouTube channel detailing how to recreate some of the visual effects from the movie.

FXHome will be adding additional tutorials through the beginning of January. Some of the tutorials you’ll find in the masterclass are:

• The Making of Rise of the Dark Side
• Create a Star Wars-style title
• Using 3D tracking in your film: How to scan and use footage (with the help of Foundry’s camera tracker) to import a 3D model of an AT-ST into battle scenes. This includes a free AT-ST model to download in the project file.
• Create the Force lightning effect: How to use lightning and electricity effects, and animated skeletons.
• How to use Meshroom to create digital doubles
• Compositing simulations from Blender to HitFilm: exporting from Blender and compositing battle scenes using HitFilm Pro.
• Rise of the Dark Side Director’s Commentary:What does it take to make a Dark Lord rise from the ashes?

A few months ago, we reviewed FXHome’s HitFilm Pro as an all-in-one VFX compositor, color grading tool, and NLE. At the time, we found that HitFilm Pro 12 may not have been quite ready as a professional NLE, though it was incredibly powerful as a VFX compositor.

However, it should be noted that there have been significant NLE updates to HitFilm Pro 14, and we recommend you check out the editing tools that are available.  In our recent look at HitFilm Pro 13, we detailed some exciting updates to the software which incorporate popular After Effects plugins. 

If you’re not familiar with FXHome, you should know that they are the cool kids on the post-production block. They want you to know how to use their software to its fullest capacity, and therefore frequently produce short but densely packed free tutorials on how to recreate your favorite visual effects, title sequences, and 3D effects – most of which can be achieved using the free version of their software, HitFilm Express.

We recently checked out their tutorial on how to recreate the ‘Upside Down’ from Stranger Things. If you missed it, you can find that post here. 

If you try out any of these VFX tutorials, link it in the comments, we’d love to see what you make!

To learn more about FXHome’s HitFilm, check out their website.

Source: FXHome