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  • Lightsaber problem

    Posted by Sam Fox on July 29, 2008 at 10:22 pm

    Hello, I have recently purcased Adobe After Effects CS3, am chuffed with it, but i looked up a tutorial to do a lightsaber because im a star wars fan.. I used the Beam effect and i moved the beam to match my prop, looks real good untill i try to play it, then i see that INBETWEEN the key frames i edited, the blade moves by itself… it looks bad..
    Can anyone help me..?

    Steven Shanahan replied 17 years, 10 months ago 2 Members · 1 Reply
  • 1 Reply
  • Steven Shanahan

    July 30, 2008 at 8:23 am

    Hey there, the issue you’re having may be due to ‘auto bezier’.

    When you have more than 2 keyframes for position values, After Effects likes to try and smooth out your movements so they don’t seem jerky (if you look at the dotted motion path, it’s curved instead of pointed) but I find often, the auto bezier gives undesired extra movement (especially if your working with the Z access and are changing directions drastically)

    To solve this, right click the desired keyframes, select ‘keyframe interpolation’, and change the Spiral Interpolation to what you want.

    OR, you can use the Pen tool on your keyframes, and modify the bezier yourself (hold and drag to stretch the curve, or alt+click to make pointed again).

    – S

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