I hope you do not believe everything that we want to make you see...

During your vacation you've certainly seen some beautiful countryside. So I'll give you to choose, without polemics, between two pastoral landscapes and you will retain the one that best suits your mind.

Step 1 : Demonstration

Here is the first landscape :

And here is the second...

Little separates them apart from the wind turbines that were added in superposition of the original photo. This tutorial has only one purpose, to show you how you can fool too naive people.

Step 2 : The trickery

To accomplish this trick, I took a photograph of a wind turbine HD. I cropped the mast and the blades of the machine using my favorite photo editing software and I created two 768 * 576 pixel images saved in PNG : an image of the mast and one of the blades.

Then simply make an effect with Hollywood FX :

• a background video (with Host media 1)
• a master object (the whole wind turbine) called "Wind turbine A" ("Eolienne A" in the french screenshots)
• a reliant object (the mast with Media "Mast") ("Mât" in the french screenshots)
• a reliant object (the blades with Media "Blades") ("Pales" in the french screenshots) and an animation of this object to make the blades turning during the effect.

As I needed more wind turbines, I made a clone of the first Wind turbine A (See our tutorial "Cloning in Hollywood FX") to get a "Wind turbine B" and a "Wind turbine C". To move and resize all the turbines at the same time, I placed all three under the control of a null object named "Group" ("Groupe" in the french screenshots).

So in the effect tree, the object "Group" includes wind turbines A, B and C. Each turbine comprises an object "Mast" and an object "Blades".

If you do not understand everything, that's OK because I put at your disposal the effect 323-wind-turbines in our free HFX page.

Step 3 : Now it's your turn to work...

If you are tempted by this trick, here's how to proceed :

• Open a new project in Studio;
• Insert on the video track one of your pictures of the landscape you want to modify (or find one from the web);
• Stretch it to about 12 seconds;
• Apply the HFX filter effect;
• Edit HFX Filter.
• Load the effect 323-wind-turbines

For more details, see our previous tutorials and especially "Add a logo, a title and an overlay image using a single video track".

While selecting the object "Group", the three turbines are selected and can be moved and / or resized simultaneously. To change the positioning, you can choose between modifying cursors of X and Y or entering new values in X and Y or by using the "Position" button. To change the scale and resize the three turbines of the same value, you can choose between modifying cursors of X, Y and Z or entering new values in X, Y and Z or by using the "Scale" button.

But each turbine can be moved and / or resized separately, just : Select the relevant turbine (A, B or C); Act on its position according to the picture; Act on the resize according to depth of field.

The object "Blades" of each of the three turbines is driven by an envelope of two key frames (start and end of the effect). To make the effect more realistic some blades turn between 2 and 3 and a half laps during the duration of the effect. The result is a shifting of movements against each other and give them different speeds. To change the speed of the starting point of the movement of a blade : Select the object "Blades" of the relevant wind turbine; Click in the "Rotation Z" field to see the envelope; Set the time cursor at the beginning of the effect to modify Z values at the beginning of the effect; Set the time cursor at the end of the effect to modify Z values at the end of the effect; You can even put a wind turbine stalled by removing the envelope of animation.

Once you have positioned and resized your three wind turbines : You can save the effect in your "Perso" folder. With the name "RightWindTurbines" for example. All this so you can reload the original effect 323-wind-turbines and do the same manipulation of positioning, resizing and rotation of the blades to position the three new turbines on the left of the three first turbines.

After reloading the original effect 323-wind-turbines and having done the same manipulation of positioning, resizing and rotation of the blades to position the three new wind turbines to the left of the screen : You can save the effect in your "Perso" folder With the name "LeftWindTurbines" for example. Exit the HFX editor with button OK.

Step 4 : Treating the image in Studio

On the video track in Studio, you have your landscape photo on which the HFX Filter effect LeftWindTurbines is applied (3 wind turbines leftmost). On the overlay track, add a blank title of 12 seconds and apply the effect HFX Filter RightWindTurbines saved in your folder "Perso" (3 wind turbines rightmost).

Now, if you want three additional wind turbines, you still have the title track of Studio

I put wind turbines in a landscape but you could choose windmills, a weathervane on the roof of a house, an animated sign on a building and why not a Ferris wheel ride on Red Square...

{Thanks to saby who translated this tutorial from french to english and cross-checked it}