# We Remade the Cyclops Beam from Avengers: Doomsday | After Effects VFX Tutorial ## Метаданные - **Канал:** Film Riot - **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVYM2nAwROQ - **Дата:** 02.04.2026 - **Длительность:** 9:17 - **Просмотры:** 31,508 ## Описание We remade the Cyclops Optic Blast from the Avengers: Doomsday teaser! In this After Effects VFX tutorial, we break down the step-by-step process of remaking the iconic beam seen in the MCU. Big VFX Bundle: https://bit.ly/4dYZFKw VFX Pro Bundle: https://bit.ly/3NTGyHl Triune Digital Lens Elements: https://www.triunedigital.com/products/lens-elements Follow Ryan Thompson: https://www.instagram.com/rjt_vfx With the X-Men finally appearing in Avengers: Doomsday, we had to take a crack at the new Cyclops beam. We ar diving into interactive lighting, environment displacement, and how to make a CG "Giant" feel massive. ▼ Timestamps ▼ » 0:00 - Intro » 0:32 - Shooting on Green Screen » 1:04 - Creating the Sky & Ground » 2:34 - Lighting/Environment » 3:24 - The Giant » 3:58 - Explosions » 5:06 - Adding Justin » 5:27 - Making The Beam » 7:18 - The Profile Shot » 8:12 - The Final Shot » 8:17 - Final Thoughts #AvengersDoomsday, #Cyclops, #VFXTutorial, #AfterEffects, #Marvel, #XMen, #OpticBlast, #Compositing ----------------------------------------------------------------- *GOODIES* The Film Riot + Smallrig Multitool! Multi-Tool Kit (7-in-1): https://geni.us/7in1wrench Multi-Tool Kit (10-in-1): https://geni.us/10in1wrench COLOR GRADING LUTs: http://bit.ly/buyFRluts SOUND FX: http://bit.ly/buyFRsfx MUSIC: https://bit.ly/storeFRmusic VFX ASSETS: http://bit.ly/buyFRvfx ## Содержание ### [0:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVYM2nAwROQ) Intro Can we recreate this massive shot from the Avengers Doomsday teaser with a tiny crew and no budget? — [singing] — Marvel has been releasing a few teasers for the film and this one really caught my eye because A, I love the X-Men, especially 90s animated series X-Men. — Come on, move it. We're missing dinner. And B, it's a thing we do using the power of friendship and After Effects. ### [0:32](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVYM2nAwROQ&t=32s) Shooting on Green Screen It's nice. Of course, we can't comp a shot without compable assets to comp with, so we threw up a green screen outside because we're lazy and wanted the sun to do most of our work, then grabbed one of our Aputure RGB lights to hit Justin with some red light for the beam. For the side shot, I just had Justin turn and left everything else in the same spot. We're also using sunglasses here for the visor, which should be fine since he's in motion. The one change here is that I had Josh holding something in front of our red light that he moved on cue to have that red pop on when we wanted the beam to start. And after we had that, it was time to jump into post. ### [1:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVYM2nAwROQ&t=64s) Creating the Sky & Ground — I'm going to take you backstage where show folk perform. Here's where magic is made. For the main wide shot, even though it will be heavily obscured by the end, we wanted to use an asset to fill out the sky. As we have before, we're using assets from AE Juice, who is also today's sponsor. They have a ton of great assets for all kinds of shots like what we are about to do and the last two Stranger Things shots we did as well. Link in the notes for those. And to make it less of a headache, they also have this free After Effects plugin, letting us browse, download, and import assets right into our comps. So, we can come in here into the Real Skies pack and grab one of these, make it a 3D layer and push it way off into the distance before scaling it up to fit and raising the horizon. Then we'll hit tint and darken with some color effects. We also used a second sky with a couple feathered masks and a warmer tone for these sections to add extra detail like we see in the original. For the foreground, we're going to add a solid layer with Element 3D using a ground model, then duplicate to cover a large area, and then some rock models duplicated and placed throughout the scene to have that same sort of destroyed rubble look of the original. Now, in a second group, we're going to add a few smaller rock models that will scatter around for detail. Back in our comp, we're going to create a camera with a wide focal length, then keyframe its position to slowly push forward. To spread a bunch of the small stones over the ground, we can go into group two, set the shape to plane, really boost the particle count, and change some of the settings to scatter them around our environment randomly before scaling down. In the render ### [2:34](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVYM2nAwROQ&t=154s) Lighting/Environment settings, we're going to alter the overall look of light by changing the environment and lighting settings, enabling ambient occlusion and shadows to work with some spotlights that will create, then tint red and place where our character will be. And we're going to feather the edges to give a directional but soft spread of light from the laser vision. As you can see in the original, a lot of the environment quickly becomes almost silhouetted. To do this, first we're going to change our fog settings, getting the distance to fade off into black. And then with a curves effect, lowering the brightness and drawing a mask to keep the dark curves out of the ground area and feathering the mask to blend. Since the elements in the distance are silhouettes, we can actually cheat it and use dark solid layers and masks to create these shapes rather than using 3D models for such distant objects with minimal parallax. We also used a Lumetri asset from the Plants pack, which we unmolded and tinted black. For the giant ### [3:24](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVYM2nAwROQ&t=204s) The Giant walking in the background, we went to mixamo. com and looked through the available models for which feet might work best, choosing Crypto and a walk animation, then we trimmed to the section that we needed and downloaded. In Blender, we increased the time stretching to make him move much slower and exported an animated OBJ sequence to use in a new copy of Element 3D, which we placed beneath the first. We'll scale him up and align world position and rotation, then use the Z depth output to make the front leg almost as dark as the foreground elements and have the other leg slightly lighter for that depth falloff. To add in the explosions and ### [3:58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVYM2nAwROQ&t=238s) Explosions destruction, we're going to be using assets from AE Juice again. For this wide shot specifically, there's a lot going on, explosion, debris, particles, fog, fire, and we were able to find everything we needed and most in slow motion as well. So, we'll place a lot of these beneath the Element 3D layers, just gradually building up each asset, sometimes changing color effects and syncing the timing to align for the first main explosion on the right, then the second collection in the center behind Justin. Both have a lot of particles and small debris shooting up in different directions, so these assets in particular were very helpful. We just layered them up and tinted some dark to make them look like ground dirt blasts instead of sparks. For this fire, we wanted it placed between some of the Element 3D rocks, so we'll make a duplicate and use the world position pass to isolate behind these rocks, placing the fire asset above and using the world pass as a luma mat. We also made a few others to place atmospherics in different areas. Then we used a bunch of smoke and fog assets, including these cool ground ones, to fill our scene with atmosphere, building up between different layers for depth. Now we'll ### [5:06](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVYM2nAwROQ&t=306s) Adding Justin grab those shots we did of Justin here, then we'll drop him into the comp beneath the top atmosphere layers, roto and key, then make him a 3D layer and position him in the right location for the camera move. We also liquefied the pose to feel more defiant and added some color and contrast to fit the scene and used an adjustment layer below to add fake shadows with feathered masks. For ### [5:27](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVYM2nAwROQ&t=327s) Making The Beam the laser vision, we found these portal tunnel assets in the Superpowers Effects pack. We'll make this angled one a 3D layer, line it up with Justin, and speed it up twice as fast. For a more chaotic power vibe, we're going to use turbulent displace. — We'll change some settings and keyframe the offset to move quickly like this here. We also used a number of duplicates, changing turbulence contrast and scale to closer match the original, and used this twin energy auras asset copied to each side, this rising steam asset and this ball energy asset from the magic pack for an extra accent around the core. We'll precompose with a copy of the camera and use a tint, a glow, and a curves to make it red and lower the blue to warm up the highlights, then set to add. We can use this for some displacement beneath and can also move a couple of the smoke layers above to tie it all into the scene. Then we'll render this out and add a fast jittery camera shake. The original shot has a lot of lens effects since it's facing a very bright object, and we have finally completed our new lens pack, which is perfect for this. It's filled with great assets like you see here for all kinds of compositing and uses. We'll use some of the border assets first, just set to screen or add, and change the color and exposure to match the source. Or if you have multiple or changing colors, you can use an adjustment layer with exposure and blur, then use the lens stock as a luma mat so that it keeps the source color and is reactive to location rather than needing keyframed masks. For ours, we'll alt-click the exposure stopwatch and add a wiggle expression to have it flicker and do the same with opacity as well. Then we added some extra layers of lens effects, building it up to get this. If you're interested, you can get this from the link below. It includes the lens borders, different animated and practical bokeh, lens dirt hits, and a variety of interesting styles and accents. For the profile shot, we went ### [7:18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVYM2nAwROQ&t=438s) The Profile Shot through a similar process again, keying Justin and building up a background with AE Juice assets, including falling snow and fire debris tinted black for ash, and these napalm blasts and Molotov cocktail assets for the sudden explosion behind him. We then knocked this all out of focus and have it tracked to the camera move. We also tracked his eye and added a red tinted exposure mask to his face to enhance the red practical light, as well as a couple of frames with a masked exposure to brighten the iris. For the laser vision, we again used duplicates of the portal assets, some using the power pin tool to squeeze the perspective, and added a contrast and blur to get these strands of light. We also added this flickering flare over the light, which helped blend the laser origin point. Once again, we used displacement below, added a camera shake, and used some more assets from our lens kit, including these bokeh and practical lens effects for texture. But to finish this off, we added a final grade, giving us this. ### [8:12](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVYM2nAwROQ&t=492s) The Final Shot — [screaming] ### [8:17](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVYM2nAwROQ&t=497s) Final Thoughts — I love how this shot came out. Our VFX artist Ryan Thompson did a killer job. His socials are below if you want to follow him there, but shot recreations like this are really interesting experiment. There's this reverse engineering aspect to it that I think is really helpful to expand your knowledge and give you new ideas of how to tackle something in the future. But again, big thank you to AE Juice for sponsoring the episode. The vast majority of the assets that we used in this shot came from there, so links to that below. And of course, they have that free plugin that is a major time saver. We also have some of our own packs on AE Juice, so definitely check all of that out. But that's it for today. Make sure you like, subscribe, and hit the bell so you're notified when we put up new content. And until next time, don't forget to write, shoot, edit, repeat. — See you later. Ta-ta. --- *Источник: https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/49114*