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Creating a Flaming Sword (AE CS4)?
Hi there creativecow-community,
I’m new here and I need some help with creating a flaming sword. I got a video of some friends of mine fighting with swords and now I want to replace the blade with a flame so that it looks like a flaming sword. I already created some fire with Trapcode Particular and CC Particle World but I was unable to find a good solution for keyframe-positioning these flames so that it looks like an actual fire blade.
I also thought about linking some of the position values in particular to a null object and moving the object around with keyframes but I couldn’t find the right values in particular. (I don’t have that much experience with expressions, yet..)So (if it’s actually possible to get a good result) could someone please help me with that? Maybe there’s even a better and easier solution than mine. My main problems are creating a (realistic!) fire blade and finding a proper way to position it with keyframes so that it overlays the original blade.
Please help me,
thanks in advance,
Simon -
5 Replies
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You needed to shoot the scene with motion tracking in mind.
since you’re just playing around, research the topic carefully, do some experiments, and reshoot with your newly gained wisdom.Motion tracking is extensively covered in many tutorials here and in other After Effects forums. You need a very good video track to do good motion tracking and that usually means you want a lot of light so you can shoot at at least 1/125 second, faster if you can. If you can’t us e a high shutter speed, your sword is moving too fast to track, it will just be a blur.
bogiesan
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Perhaps tracking the sword in the same manner you would in the many light saber tutorials. Precomp the result and use that resulting layer as the emitter.
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If you want to try and link Particular to a Null, go to the ‘Emitter’ section and use the ‘Position XY’ value.
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Create the flames in Particle World or Particular, motion track the sword and keyframe the particles (adjust speed, direction, etc) to match movement of the sword for realism.
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You can motion track the swords and make a mask around them. Look on youtube for a tutorial on motion tracking and animating Masks through keyframing. You can then apply flames in a new layer as screen as the visibility mode. This will make the flames follow the swords while keeping the flames on them 🙂 this may require a bit of tinkering to get right but it as far as i can think the simplest way to do this.
Anthony Signature ViiOLENT Editing Studio
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