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Lightsabers
with the coming out of starwars 3, i want to make a starwars film. The only problem is that i’m having a hard time creating lightsaber beams. I’ve tried the beam effect on after affects, and used key framing, but it was vary time consuming and it didn’t stay on the lightsaber perfectly. Is there any easier way to do this?
Eric Beaton
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12 Replies
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the thing is i don’t have the program commotion.
Eric Beaton
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You don’t HAVE to have Commotion to do sabers. They just did it in Commotion because it has easier roto tools. But since they made the recipe, AE has improved it’s tools. So wherever they say they used Commotion, just use AE instead. It will still get you to the same place.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
Much safer to do it in AE…
Jim
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Jim Tierney
Digital Anarchy
http://www.digitalanarchy.com
415-586-8434 -
the best way is this way
https://www.theforce.net/fanfilms/postproduction/sabres/aesabertutorial.mov
https://ryanw.michaelfrisk.com/ryan-w/tutorials.html
same guy just more detail on flicker.
make sure you de-interlace your footage or problems will happen.
also lock you source footage so you dont bump it on accident,
yes this is tedious work but his effect was enough to get him a job at Lucas arts he has since left. -
I did this using “beam” and then “glow” in after effects:
https://www.redigering.com/filmer/effekter/lightsaber.wmv1. apply beam and set keyframes for start and end of beam
2. press pagedown to move forward one frame, and move the start and end crosshair for the beam. Repeat until done.
3. precomp and apply glow.
4. add CC Light Rays for the lighting spark when the swords meet. (deselect “color from source”)Regards
Tore Gresdal -
the core is too white and stable. saber glows flicker.
not bad but not good either. -
would it be possible to do the lightsaber with the motion tracker?
Eric Beaton
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You’re right of course. But I am pretty happy with it considering I created a 2 minute fight sequence in three days, including figuring out how the heck I would do it. (And my fellow students were pretty darn happy about it too… so why put more time and energy into it? :-))
But I know a lot more of after effects today then I did then and I don’t think it would be a problem to add some flickering. (each lightsaber were on a separate precomp.) Connecting the wiggler to opacity or glow strength would probably be a good choice.
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That was my intention when we shot it, as I put a bright red sticker on the end of the plastic stick they were fighting with. However, the fighters were swinging them so hard and fast that I couldn’t see anything but a huge blur… and the motion tracker got lost after a few frames… so I ended up doing it by hand.
But it might be possible if it were shot with higher shutter speeds… But then again that will most likely kill the realism as motion blur in film is essential.
I don’t know how to add motion blur to footage in AE, but the lightsabers were easy enough as AE is aware of their motion and I would just open the shutter angle. (at least that’s what I think I did… can’t remember exactly)Regards
Tore Gresdal
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