Ways of creating/compositing flying fabric.
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.
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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.
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Stock footage of a piece of fabric on some sort of chroma key. (anyone know where i could find one?)
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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.
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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.
Posted Mar 8, 2026, 1:20 PM UTC