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A simple special effects graphic question
Hi guys,
First off I just want to say what a great resource these pages are. I’ve taught myself Vegas purely from using these forums and the help function located in the program – you guys have some great stuff here. Special thanks to Ed for his wonderful newsletter articles which helped me through the newbie days. I read of his recent illness and I hope he gets well soon.
I’m currently working on a small machinima project, and I’m stuck at a particular scene where I require a graphic of a blast of blue light to travel across the screen (similar to a laser). I’m sure this is a very simple question, and normally I can dig out the answers I require from a combination of old forum posts and Ed’s tips, but I’m obviously not looking in the right place on this one.
Essentially I want to insert this graphic on top of a track, and then have it rapidly travel across the screen – it is travelling from a weapon and then striking a character. I’m familiar with using keyframes so animating it wouldn’t be a problem – I just don’t know how to go about inserting it. I want to either (whichever you recommend) import it as a pre-made small graphic or, perhaps better, use one of the tools inside Vegas itself to place a coloured slice of blue light on the video, then keyframe its movement across the screen.
For example, I find using the built-in tool to move coloured text around the screen (on a transparent background) nice and easy to do, and all I want to do is achieve a similar effect with this graphic – where you can alter its position on-screen then keyframe its movement.
Thanks for your time,
Neil
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1 Reply
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The quickest way I’ve done this sort of thing is to put a blue solid color generated media event on a track.
Open track motion. Turn off aspect ration preserve and size around center button and resize and position it until it is a blue line going from your weapon to the target.
Use track motion glow, opacity (and other filters) to make it look laser beam like.
Then use track motion key frames for position and a linear wipe on the clip to make it move across the screen.
Hope this helps,
Mary Waitrovich
UW-Madison
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