• Lighting Design

  Lightning effects

  Posted by Rick Wise on August 31, 2010 at 7:09 pm

  Is there a good plug-in or just a way to create a believable lightning flash in Vegas? Effects I’m looking for are:
  –lightning appears to flash outside the windows, momentarily lighting up the room
  –actual lightning bolts seen out the window

  Thanks

  Rick Wise
  director of photography
  San Francisco Bay Area
  and part-time instructor lighting and camera
  grad school, SF Academy of Art University/Film and Video
  https://www.RickWiseDP.com
  https://www.linkedin.com/in/rwise
  email: Ri**@********DP.com

  John Fishback replied 15 years, 9 months ago 4 Members · 4 Replies
• 4 Replies

• 

  Todd Terry

  August 31, 2010 at 7:39 pm

  Hi Rick…

  I’m not sure of any actual plugin to do what you want (although there may be), but I’ve always found fairly realistic lightning strikes easy enough to do without it.

  Normally, I just way crank up the brightness and lower the contrast for about two frames, then skip a couple of frames (i.e., leave them normal), then do it again to one additional frame. That looks pretty good. Or you can make double strikes, or even triple. It’s also helpful to skew your color grading a bit to the blue side on those affected frames as well.

  You can take it a step further, too, if there are objects or people in the room that you want to see the effect more on. Just export those affected frames as stills (.bmp files or whatever), then take them into Photoshop so you can tweak on them, giving people and objects more of the effect on select areas, such as one side of a person’s face. Such as, one glow a bit heavier on the side of someone’s cheek, another on the nose, one on the forehead, etc… obviously, from the direction of the light source (window, or whatever).

  It’s easy breezy, maybe five minutes.

  T2

  __________________________________
  Todd Terry
  Creative Director
  Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
  fantasticplastic.com
  
• 

  Rick Wise

  August 31, 2010 at 7:47 pm

  Thanks, Todd!

  Rick Wise
  director of photography
  San Francisco Bay Area
  and part-time instructor lighting and camera
  grad school, SF Academy of Art University/Film and Video
  https://www.RickWiseDP.com
  https://www.linkedin.com/in/rwise
  email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com
• 

  Bob Cole

  September 1, 2010 at 2:16 am

  Don’t know about Vegas, but it would be easy in After Effects. For an actual jagged lightning simulation, you could luma key a dark window (or do a quick matte) with another layer from an effects generator like BorisFX Lightning. Making it look believable is another matter. Good sound effect is just as important.

  Bob C
• 

  John Fishback

  September 1, 2010 at 2:21 pm

  AfterFX has at least 3 or 4 standard lightning presets with full control of position, direction of strike, look of the lightning and more.

  John

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