Here is my day-to-night hyperlapse tutorial using a new hyperlapse rig.
Day to night hyperlapse tutorial
- Find a subject and a path you can follow both during the day and at night. Note your start and end points. Be mindful that visibility at night might be totally different.
- Use a crosshair or marker or focus point on your viewfinder to line up an anchor point on the building. Make sure this anchor point is visible in the daytime as well as nighttime. Certain windows are visible at night but not during the day for example
- Shoot your day and night shots separately, make sure you use a consistent step size so you get the same number of photos for both sequences. It helps to do a practice run, or to use tiles or road markings for example.
- Stabilise both the hyperlapse shots. The fastest method is the warp stabiliser, but the more accurate one is the point tracker in After Effects. Great results can be achieved when you combine both. These are covered in separate chapters.
- Use the Difference blend mode to overlay the shots and see where you need to adjust your scale, position and maybe rotation. Use key frames as needed to align the shots as closely as possible from beginning to end.
- On the top layer add a circular mask in the middle of the image. Keyframe the expansion parameter to expand over two or three seconds.
- Add a big feather to the mask to create a soft edge
- Duplicate the mask and keyframes over time to create multiple transitions in the same sequence. Alternate the blend mode between masks from Add to Subtract to make sure you reveal the masks in the correct order. This might take some fiddling around,
- Export your video and enjoy the end result.