Star War Light Sabers?

laxster08 · Post by **laxster08** » Fri Oct 24, 2003 3:00 am

Hello i'm new to the forum..hello everyone...this has prob been asking a milliion of times...but i was wondering how u woudl make the star war light saber effects..and with wut programs..thanks guys

U.S.Amateurfilmaker · Post by **U.S.Amateurfilmaker** » Fri Oct 24, 2003 3:06 am

Welcome to the forum!

If you have Discreet's combustion, all you have to do is motion track a bar of light to the person's hand. I think you can also do this in Adobe After Effects, but I'm not positive.

Alternatively, you can export the footage as a picture sequence and import it into photoshop or Paint shop pro, but the frame by freame adding of the light bar would take a lot of time, so be prepared if you go that route.

insert_coin · Post by **insert_coin** » Fri Oct 24, 2003 3:15 am

the easiest way is with After Effects... seriously there is no easier way... i really should make a tutorial on it and then we could just have a link... its totally easy.

all you need is a solid white layer in AE use the pen tool to make your lightsaber shape then keyframe it through out your animation... then duplicate the keyframed layer so you have two... the top copy you set to ADD and give it a guassian blur of like 2 or 3 or whatever...

select the lower layer and goto the layer menu and select solid settings and change the color to red blue green or whatever color you want the saber... then set the lower layers mask expansion to like 8 pixels or whatever looks good because different the size depends on how far the saber is away from the camera the lower layer also needs a guassian blur of around 8 i guess whatever you think looks good... and your done... make sure you turn on motion blur for both layers. ill work on a tutorial later on tonight... does anyone want to feature in my tutorial by sending me some footage of you waving a stick around? cause i dont like seeing me on anything really./

foxwood · Post by **foxwood** » Fri Oct 24, 2003 3:27 am

I don't want to shift through my billion favorates, but go to www.theforce.net and hit their fan film section they have a bunch of good stuff.

insert_coin · Post by **insert_coin** » Fri Oct 24, 2003 5:44 am

bah and here i am writing a tutorial! oh well i reckon my tutorial will be better MUHAHAH!

Mushiman · Post by **Mushiman** » Fri Oct 24, 2003 6:11 am

go here & see my saber tutorial & actions for Photoshop.

insert_coin · Post by **insert_coin** » Fri Oct 24, 2003 6:36 am

ewwww see photoshop isnt the way to go... you have to do it frame by frame with a filmstrip file! that will take years... interpolation is your friend

Grant · Post by **Grant** » Fri Oct 24, 2003 7:31 am

Insert please post us a tutorial and we will all be converted

xander · Post by **xander** » Fri Oct 24, 2003 10:59 am

I would love to do it in After Effects...but I find it difficult to *cough* crack *cough* the software. I dont currently have a copy of the software!! (any ideas?

)

I have done a good but short clip of a lightsaber fight. I did it by exporting a filmstrip into photo shop and drawing the blades frame by frame. it was exhasuting!!

it took me about 8 hours to finish a 15 secondclip!!

I would have thought, though that frame by frame would give a much more accurate effect than keyframing and interpolation??

anyway, you can check out the clip I did here: //www.brunel.ac.uk/~cs00aad/downloads/SaberFight.mpg - 3.01MB.

let me know what you think!

thanks, alex

2nd_Recon · Post by **2nd_Recon** » Fri Oct 24, 2003 1:07 pm

Retroscoping the blade will make sure it is always where you want it to be, it just takes damn ages to do

xander · Post by **xander** » Fri Oct 24, 2003 4:05 pm

Originally posted by 2nd_Recon
Retroscoping the blade will make sure it is always where you want it to be, it just takes damn ages to do

that's 'rotoscoping' !

insert_coin · Post by **insert_coin** » Fri Oct 24, 2003 6:33 pm

in my opinion keyframes and interpolation would look better than rotoscoping because when you rotoscope something and position it by yourself every time you get shakey outlines... maybe lightsabers have shaky outlines but that could be done with a filter in after effects... im just saying after effects way is faster...

here i worked all day and made this tutorial... enjoy

lightsaber tutorial v2.0

Grant · Post by **Grant** » Sat Oct 25, 2003 12:31 am

nice tutorial

HetH · Post by **HetH** » Sat Oct 25, 2003 1:18 pm

I donÃ‚Â´t wanna sound rude or something, but from judging the shots in your tutorial the glow does not look too convincing at all.

Everyone whoÃ‚Â´s thinking about adding the famous lightsaber effect to his movie I can only recommend one website: www.ryan-w.com

That guy has worked out a pretty cool method (not too different form the tutorial posted above, but with much better results) to make lightsabers.

Here are the direct links to his stuff regarding sabers:

http://www.towerhost.com/~ryan-w/ryan-w ... abers.html

http://www.towerhost.com/~ryan-w/ryan-w ... bers2.html

http://www.theforce.net/theater/postpro ... ials.shtml

Understand and use this method and your sabers should almost look as canon as the sabers from the original movies.

insert_coin · Post by **insert_coin** » Sat Oct 25, 2003 3:46 pm

all i can say is try it and see... the pics are small and without any footage in the background... so its kinda hard to make a firm judgement from it... so grap a stick and at least give one frame a go...

Edit: i went to that guys tutorials its almost identical to the way i would do it except he did something better... a third layer thats less blurred to create a sort of rail to the blur which would improove it. im just going to steal that idea and add it as a footnote to my tutorial. but all the other ways he described cloning keyframes and creating new layers and pasting was way to complicated for a newb... why not just copy and paste the layer instead. oh well

[Edited on 25-10-2003 by insert_coin]

xander · Post by **xander** » Sat Oct 25, 2003 5:00 pm

i just had a quick look through and used a trial version of after effects for the first time ever!

i appreciate all the tutorials - thanks.

but theres one thing im not clear on: i get how to move the shape between keyframes, but what if you need to change the width or shape of it, for example from a single straight line to a fan shape (when the blade is moving).

please be specific as I dont know any of the AE controls.

thanks.

BTW what did everyone think of my saber clip? (i put the link up a few posts ago)_

xander · Post by **xander** » Sat Oct 25, 2003 5:08 pm

When I try to move the timeline or do other certain things, I get this error:

after effects error: OpenGL 3D: failed to set lights - monitor color depth must be 32.
(5044 :: 0)

my color depth is 32 bit!
I have trial version of AE 6 pro.

any ideas?

insert_coin · Post by **insert_coin** » Sat Oct 25, 2003 5:54 pm

AE 6 Pro is out? hmm okay. *note to self*

as for the keyframing once you have your layer you will find a whole pile of options when you click the small triangle next to the layer in the timeline window... and then there are still more options... the stopwatch icons when pressed will make a keyframe at frame 0 also at the end and then when you go through the timeline and stop and make a change to the mask it will automatically make a keyframe for you... as long as you clicked the stopwatch beside the mask shape option...

as for changing the shape you will need to select single points on the mask and move them instead of selecting all the points... a point is selected if it is fully colored in if it isnt selected it will apear as a small square outline

HetH · Post by **HetH** » Sun Oct 26, 2003 3:59 pm

@insert_coin: What do you mean? Where is he talking about cloning keyframes?!

For the normal lightsaber effect heÃ‚Â´s suggesting the same thing like you do, duplicate the first layer of your sword wehre you did all the rotoscoping work and then just apply the feathering to the mask, thatÃ‚Â´s it. And having 3 layers of blur and using color balance then really makes this look great. Alle the other stuff heÃ‚Â´s offering there is just for the details to improve it where possible. Like adding the flickering etc.

And actually I was a total noob at AE when I found his video tutorial for saber glows, I needed about an hour to completely understand his method and make my own sabers... so I canÃ‚Â´t be that hard to understand.

insert_coin · Post by **insert_coin** » Sun Oct 26, 2003 4:12 pm

i read through it rather fast but what i gathered from it was to have one layer rotocope it all then make another layer i think it was black and copy the keyframes to that layer and blah... no need to get stroppy its a good tut im not denying it.

also i made my tutorial quite quick to get it up since someone asked for one... so i still need to work on some parts eg the pictures which someone said looked bad.

Riggzy · Post by **Riggzy** » Sun Oct 26, 2003 8:33 pm

hey, if you wanna get a (reasonable) light saber effect for free try Axagon Composer 0.93. It also has a whole bunch of advanced compositing features. heres an example that i made with Axagon and my mate with a very badly made lightsaber *cough*whichisactuallyaplasticpoleifoundinthegarage*cough*

wuh woh...Angelfire's bandwidth has busted. oh well

I3lade203 · Post by **I3lade203** » Mon Oct 27, 2003 3:14 am

I actully know how this works! lol you need to film a secen with 2 poles do something in perimere( which i dont know how to do

) then next open in paint shop pro add lgihtsabre affects onto it or something

Carnage7p · Post by **Carnage7p** » Mon Oct 27, 2003 4:13 am

yeah except a lot more complicated than that. but photoshop is not the recommended way to do.

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Star War Light Sabers?

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