‘DRAW’ with LIGHTS

[Steve Roberts]

You could apply effect>time>echo to the footage. Tweak the settings so the line is very long. This effect takes a long time to render.

If you want a continuous line, you could apply the effect, then go to the last frame, where you see the entire line. Save that frame as a still, then reimport. Use that still as a guide to draw a mask (in AE) following that contour, then apply effect>generate (or render)>stroke. You then animate the stroke’s “end” value (from 0 to 100) to “draw on” the line as the point moves.

That’s one way.

[Andres]

maybe it would be better to make that still-image line in photoshop (because of the infinite creative posibilities in that software) and then import it to AE and “draw on” it.
In tutorials section you should find a very very good tutorial called something like “making ornamentals”, that would be a good help.
By the way, is your light spot an animated point with vectors? or is it a movie imported to the proyect?

see you

[Chris Smith]

You can just modify the “organic lines” preset in Particular to one particle. Short of shooting actual light moving through space on a slow shutter like it’s normally done, an all digital solution like particles gets the job done with a ton of control. Seems like a weird comprimise trying to use a bit of real light that was shot trying to digitally enhance it. I would stick to doing it all optical or all digital. Optical looks the best, but all digital has the benefit of complete control.

Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com

[Mylenium]

Well, even if you were to do it in Photoshop, you are making things more difficult than they need be. Ever heard of “Select color range”? Once you realize that, you could easily create an action that accomodates all your needs by using the black background as the selection criterium all the way.

Anyway, as the others suggested, use the Echo effect. There is no need for workarounds in this case, just animate the number of echos in sync with your number of frames from 0 to the last frame (if you have 500 frames, it should be 500-1=499). Then all you need to do is make sure that your echo time matchges your framerate, e.g. 1 sec/25 frames = 0.04 sec. This will draw your point, forming a streak of light that gets longer with every frame.

Mylenium

[Pour Myl

[Mike Clasby]

This isn’t bad:

Adjustment Layer
Echo
-0.010
Number of Echoes 300 (Comp 10 secs at 29.97)

Vector Blur
CL
Amount 9, wiggle(10,3) (Gives a nice soft Stroke with a bright hard line inner core, that fluctuates)

White Solid 10×10 Oval Mask
Fill for Color if you don’t want pure white
Animate position
Motion Blur On for layer and Comp

Precomp the above and put on top of scene/characters

[Rhett Robinson]

Wow… I’d never even played with echo! If you knew the number of times I’ve used “write on” or another process to create this effect, including illustrator blends, etc., you’d chuckle. It’s sort of a good thing, because I learned a lot and have made some fantastic pieces with write on (okay, I think they’re great), and this seems to create a fair amount of processor overload, but it’s dang easy for this type of thing!

THANKS!

[Mike Clasby]

Just wonderng if you can get any taper with WriteOn? Love to see a still or two. Thanks.

[Tobias Hame]

Thanks for the great advice, and sorry for this incredibly late reply (august was vacation-time, finally)

i experimented around with the echo, and now i got quite the result that i wanted, perfect.
the only problem is the incredibly large rendering effort…

footage was 220 sec, echo amount 5000.
rendering starts quickly, and gets slow soon 😉
after 8 hours, about 33% was finished, and now it took 40sec for EACH FRAME!

since this was with DV footage, and I want to switch to HD material later, i am looking for a
faster solution… any ideas ?

Thanks,
paralion