Game:

FWsim - Fireworks Display Simulator (2021)

Duration: 0:37

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There are many fireworks videos around showing HDR, 4K Footage.
The goal of this experiment was to see if the quality of FWsim video files could be used to make an HDR effect with a third-party program. The result is good-looking to me, even though this is not a real HDR and it's just a simulation.

Thank you for the over 30k views.

So, how do you make a fake HDR firework video with After Effects? These are the steps I did:

Part A - Creating the simulated (or fake) HDR effect.
-A.1 - Duplicate the original footage.
-A.2 - Desaturate the duplicated footage.
-A.3 - Invert the duplicated footage.
-A.4 - Set blend mode to "Overlay"
-A.5 - Add a Gaussian Blur effect and tweak it to your liking. This increases the sharpness of the video.
-A.6 - Duplicate the original footage, again.
-A.7 - Set this duplication above the two other video clips
-A.8 - Set the blend mode to "Linear Light" and tweak the opacity to your liking.

Part B - Colour Grading
-B.1 - Apply the basic LOG-type LUT. This makes the clip look much more grey-ish.
-B.2 - Apply another Cineon conversion LUT, which simulates the film printing of the footage.
-B.3 - Between the two layers, add a Curve correction effect and tweak it to your liking.
-B.4 - Add a Hue/Saturation effect to increase/decrease saturation if needed.
-B.5 - At the bottom of the effects hierarchy (this means at the top of the effects queue in After Effects) add a Blur effect and keep a high threshold (I used 95%), a high radius and 2.0 strength.

Note that this technique is usually not allowed in FWsim contests due to the fact it requires a third party application. But if you are not interested in contests like me and you want to just research and look forward to experimenting and enjoying some good-looking virtual fireworks, it's a great way to further enhance your experience in this field.

You can see more videos with this technique applied, the most complex one (and time-consuming!) is this pyromusical show: https://youtu.be/DMXhWqXNAlQ

Come and discuss this on the Simulation Fireworks Association Discord server where you can also download some effects, and assets and get some help if you are stuck with FWsim creations: https://discord.gg/8tRKFWjqn4

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