Regrets. We all have them. And one of my biggest regrets is not being able to make the Rage Hammer/God of Thunder After Effects templates epic enough at the time. And I wanted to, I really did. You see, each template I’ve ever made has a code-name in the beginning. Just before I decide on a catchy title to use. For example: “Jungle Temple” was “Agkor Wat”, “Life+Line” was “Ambulance”, “Calm Waters” was “Crystal Clear”, so on and so forth. Anyway, as it turns out, Rage Hammer’s code-name was “Hammer Smash” and I wanted to title it “Mjölnir” (in the end I went with “Rage Hammer” when I released that After Effects template). And incidentally, Hammer Smash’s code-name was “Mjolnir Mallet”, and yeah, I ended up calling it “Hammer Smash”. So it all comes full circle, you see. And the reason I didn’t make it as cool as I wanted to was because of time constraints. Because on top of modeling the hammer itself and texturing it, I also had to create the wall breaking and texture that as well, then make an additional smoke simulation for the hammer impact and in the end that would’ve resulted in a project lifetime way longer than I anticipated for this particular After Effects template so I decided to leave it at that for the time being. I kept going back to that project folder and studying it for some time until I finally decided to make it just the way I wanted. Now that the hammer was already made, I could create the break-away wall and an additional smoke simulation, to give this After Effects template the epicness and glory it deserves.
Now, in regards to technical challenges, surprisingly there weren’t many. It was very straight-forward since I already knew how to put it together after doing the first one and doing 3D metallic text in other templates, but there WERE aspects that I really wanted to add interactivity to and sadly couldn’t because the file-size of the final thing would’ve been jacked up too much like procedurally changing the lighting on the hammer (and the background lights that illuminate it) but I still ended up explaining how that can be achieved by hand in the readme, if you are knowledgeable enough in After Effects.
Hit the break to watch the template in action!
Read moreAfter Effects Template: Hammer Smash – Epic Thor’s Hammer Logo Opener