r/AfterEffects•
DonWalsh

Ways of creating/compositing flying fabric.

Discussion

I'm in prep for shooting a music video where one of the shots is a white bed sheet flying over the city. I will shoot the plate from the ground looking up and will need to create or composite the sheet flying through. I have decent knowledge of AE, but I wouldn't call myself a pro. I know enough to be proficient and not be scared of complex stuff as long as there is a decent tutorial. Let's put it this way - I used to do Mt Mograph first tutorials back when he was first uploading them - idk how good of a reference that is.

I see a bunch of ways of achieving the shot tho.

  1. Film the white sheet in slowmo on greenscreen and composite it in. This seems to be the easiest approach to me and what i'd do if i had the budget for an extra grip, soundstage, SFX ventilator, time etc.

  2. Stock footage of a piece of fabric on some sort of chroma key. (anyone know where i could find one?)

  3. Create the fabric and animate it fully in AE. I don't think my AE skills are good enough for this since it would involve matching the lighting, creating shadows etc. Maybe there is a simple tutorial I could follow tho? I also don't want it to look cheap and obvious that it is a badly made CG.

  4. Create the fabric animation with AI on a chroma key and composite it in. What would be the best AI to get it done?

I'm already above the budget, so I gotta find a way of solving this myself and cheaply or I will just not have the shot.

camera locked off, the sheet flies through

Posted Mar 8, 2026, 1:20 PM UTC

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