The long awaited lightsaber tutorial remake. Credit to Ryan Wieber and MasterZap for the methods combined here.
is there a downloadable version of this tutorial if not u really should make one plz.
There’s no downloadable version. There’s no plans to provide a downloadable version in the future.
where do you get an unrotoscoped video of rvb at because i go to the old forums and click the links and it just takes me to micheal frisk.com and yousendit.com and they don’t work so do you have any ideas i want to work on it like you did even though the video is old and i can’t send it in so please help me.
Hey,
Did you do that really cool saber fight on youtube? (i see a frame from that video at the top of this page) Amazing.
Also, I’ve been trying out AE for the first time and LOVE it. But when I was working on a lightsaber clip for a short film, I had to suddenly change accounts on my Mac (long story). So I drag it into the other account. I open it up (i had had some trouble before) and when I try dragging the footage down, it’s all black. Any help?
Hey Molly,
Are you referring to this happening when following my tutorial, or in general?
hi thnx for the tutorial love it but in a shot when your going frame by frame and u can see the blur of your prop, and sometimes it gets to a point where it dispears for a second i know this is normal now how do you get past that so you can find out where the edges are to rotoscope it? because you can be rotoscoping it and then you can’t find the edges and i don’t want to guess it might be wrong! please help
Generally when the edges disappear, it’s down largely to guess-work. However, you can make your estimations a lot more accurate by locating the edges on frames before and after the area where the props are disappearing, and masking those frames. AE will then interpolate the mask between those two positions, which can often give a good indication of where the blade would be in the intervening frames.
This doesn’t work in all situations, but in fast, fanning blade scenes, it will often work quite well.
good job with the tutorial, but when I export my file (as a .avi), the saber effect gets ahead or behind the actual video, revealing the stick I used as my reference. is there a way I can fix that?
cool thanks because i’m probably going to make a film with lightsaber mostly fighting but it will be pretty much grenscreened so i’ll try not to make it look as fake as it can
Where did you get those lightsabersticks as in the film?
Hi just came across your blog and have been browsing around some of your posts and just wondering why you chose a WordPress site dont you find it difficult to do anything with? Been thinking about starting one.
Yeh it can be a little difficult to deal with when you’re trying to breach the gap between design + your own code and fitting all that in with WordPress. Certain parts of the site, like the links at the top, aren’t WordPress pages and are managed separately, and it’s not too nice having that divide.
WordPress does make things more awkward to manage in terms of structure, design and code but ultimately this site is just a blog and it’s obviously very good as a blogging platform. I think if i was to do it over again (and i will) then i’d make the site as modular as possible, isolating wordpress to a very discrete area where the blog can be managed and make as many hooks into the backbone code that i’ve written as possible.
If you want a pure blog then i think WordPress is great, there’s tonnes of plugins and templates you can just drag and drop to have a fully functional site in minutes. If you’re going to spend a lot of time in the theme editor however, then not so much. There’s also a pretty high risk of getting your blog hacked if you don’t have the proper security and keep up to date.
Whats the settings to achieve the Red color?
It’s been some years since i’ve done any lightsabers (and many hard drives) so i no longer have any numbers to hand. You should try posting at http://boards.theforce.net/board.asp?brd=10015 .
Why are your archive pages not loading?
The archive pages aren’t set up i think, the site was designed for the categories to be used primarily in its stead.
Hey there Rhy.
I followed your video exactly, but after I’ve added the colour effects, I now want to continue make adjustments to the positioning of the core. But now when I open the footage’s own window, the mask path no longer appears.
If I turn render on, the white appears, but I CAN’T edit the path anymore, cos it doesn’t show.
Please could you help,
Thanks
Harry
Hell trere, I am experiecing problems with Adobe After Effects. See, I just got this program and I’m just really used to it. But, my question is why is my lightsaber showing through my entire video? I mean it’s there when it’s not suppost to be there. How do I fix this problem. Thank you for your time. :}