If you like science fiction like me, you probably noticed that over the years, with each generation of Star Trek, the transporter effect has been modified and evolved.

The basic principal stays more or less the same. You shoot the scene without the actor then shoot another take and place him inside. After that in post you’ll composite the effect on top of him while fading him in or out.

On the new J. J. Abrams’s Star Trek movie, they modified it once again – but this time for better (In my opinion). In this movie the transporter effect looks like its warping bright strings of particles around the actor and once it reaches the full capacity the actor dissolves and disappears or appears.

I was fascinated by this when I first saw it in theatre and was thrilled to try and meet the challenge of re-creating this effect. I believe that for this movie, the guys from Digital Domain used a 3D software with a more complex particle system.

Now, I’m not going to say that I managed to achieve the same look, but I think I got close enough using the tools from Red Giant Software with After Effects.

I was honored to guest host this episode on RGTV (usually hosted by my dear friend Aharon Rabinowitz), not to mention, it was great fun!

So if you’d like to see what I came up with – here’s the link.

You can compare it to the real effect appearing briefly in the end of this trailer.