Lightsaber Clash

[Alejandro Torres]

The easiest way I can think of is to use a lens flare. Set the blending mode to add and I think it would do the effect. As for flying sparks, etc you could use 3d particle world or for a more realistic effect you could try some stock footage.

Regards

Alejandro

[Aharon Rabinowitz]

I would create a pale yellow solid. Give it an elliptical mask. Feather the edges a lot. Set it’s transfer mode to Add. Place it over the hit point. Play with the opacity till you have a good level of brightness, and animate it’s opacity in and out.

For extra kick, maybe duplicate the layer, and tighten up the mask so you have a bright center where the 2 layers overlap.

Aharon Rabinowitz
Email: arabinowitz (AT) yahoo (DOT) com
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[Jens Enqvist]

When adding flares and glows you can try darkening the footage slightly at the same time. It increases the intensity of the light, or contrast rather.

[Matthew Mccarter (macattack)]

Also be sure to try to add reactive lighting to your subjects with masks.

If you don’t know what reactive lighting is, it is the light created to make an effect look like it was actually there. So for instance, you could “light up” their faces in AE when the lightsabers clash so it looks like its happening in real life.

There’s a tutorial on Digital Juice and Andrew Kramer has one for his muzzle flash tutorial.

[Sabin Arditty]

Ryan Weiber has done alot of vfx work with lightsabers. He made some pre-matted lightsaber ‘contact flashes’ here https://www.ryan-w.com/ryan-w/clips/flash.mov just change the transfer mode to Add. here is his website: https://www.ryan-w.com/ryan-w/index.html it has pretty much everything there is to lightsaber effects.

-Sabin