They’re pretty simple. In AE, create a project with a massive comp so you can scale the flash to the size you want later, about 3 frames long.

From here, it’s simply a case of creating a ‘big flash’ that starts large and fades out over the 3 frames. You can do this any number of ways, and depending on the complexity you’re after (i prefer orange-white flashes rather than flashes based off the colour of the saber) create something like a lens flare on a black background with a large flare brightness and animate it down.

Render this as a .mov or something similar, and then just comp it over your footage where you need the flash, set it’s transfer mode to add or screen and scale it down appropriately.

Hi Ryan

When you move the comp into the new comp, what you need to do in the ‘cores’ composition is turn off (the ‘eye’ button) the top footage layer. This should be the first layer in the cores comp, it’s just for reference. The reason mine goes black and yours doesn’t is purely coincidental, as the first frame of mine is black anyway. Just be sure to turn off the top footage layer in the cores composition and you should be good to go

Hope this helps

Hi Ryan

I do click the eye a little later in the video, i refer to it as the ‘reference layer’ i believe, i didn’t need to do it as early as you however just by a coincidence in the colour of my footage.

However, what i said earlier should still work for you. You should have two footage layers in your cores comp, the one above the adjustment layers is the one you want to ‘turn off’. Then bring that comp into a new comp and start applying the colours, this should then apply colour to only the lightsabers.

Hope this helps

What program are you using?

Hi, I’m having trouble getting the tutorial to play correctly. When I get to about three and a half minutes through, the player just stops. Nothing I do seems to make it continue, do you have any suggestions?

hmm…might be a dumb question but, how did you get to use a quicktime movie? I am using Adobe After Effects Professional 7 and I cannot import a quicktime movie.

Hi witch version of AE did/do you use and would CS3 be ok to use to do this type of rotoscoping?

thanks for that also what is the best way that you found for an effective lightsaber power on and power off animation? nobody has covered it that i have seen anyway, and aslo what do you use to edit in all the sound effects thanks for your help it been usefull.

Rich

yea i need to know one more thing how do you inport my adobe after effect project into adobe premire

ok well i finished the video and on AE its blury and i am on the compostion that says final. the one you made in your video and i clicked on final then went to compostion, then went make a movie and this render queue thing came up. wat are the step to so from here on out to watch my video

Hello. I am using CS3 and ALL the screen is being painted with saber’s color. =)
The problem start after I create the adjustment layers. When I put blur effect on the layer, the whole screen begins to get the effect. And it keeps happening when I use balance color to paint the saber. My whole screen is red =P
I really can’t figure out what is happening.

btw, very nice tutorial. Thanx a lot for it. And thanx again if you help me with my little problem =)

Helllo. Here is a screenshot of the movie: http://www.nalata.net/shot.jpg
Looks like my nodes are well connected i’ve checked every frame). I don’t know what what you mean when you say ” If you’re positioning your adjustment layers correctly”. Maybe that is the problem, but I tried to do as you did in the tutorial. Maybe I lost some step?

When making the blurs, the WHOLE screen became white. It happended when I changed the blend mode to screen on the adjustment layer, as you did.
Then I choose “linear light” on the last adjustment layer (from top to bottom) and the image became fine and the buir was applied only in the saber. But I still can’t do the ame thing with the colors.

I am new with AE and really don’t know hot solve this =(

Thank you

Hi Clayton,

If it was just with the colours i’d definitely know what your problem is; you need to turn off (with the eyeball on the left of the layer) the footage layer above the adjustment layer when you’re done with the rotoscoping composition. I do this in the video, but a little later on. If you go to your ‘final’ comp, at this point the footage layer in your roto comp above the adjustment layers should be turned off, so that it should look right in the final comp at this point.

If you’re following the video through to the end then you shouldn’t be applying colour in the composition you’re showing me in the screenshot, that comp (if doing my whole method) would be just for blurs. The idea being that you roto on this comp and do the blurs, using the top footage layer as a reference guide which you turn off when you’re done rotoscoping, then you apply colour in the next comp, then you do the final comp where you bring the colour comp and footage together.

Also be sure that you’re getting the transfer modes correctly. If you go to the tutorials link at the top of the page, scroll down to the lightsaber tutorial you’re using, you can actually download my project file which should help you out.

Hope this helps

Hi Jerry,

Yes AE will manage fine with .mov on windows.

Hi Selman,

The tutorial is done in AE 7, so it should be similar. My first advice would be to download the project file from the tutorials page to see if you can recognise your problem, but as mentioned above often if the whole video is blurring then your mask is incomplete. Make sure the mask layer is below the adjustment blur layers and your reference footage layer above the blur layers.

Hi.
Me and my friend just started making a saber fight, but do we really have to change the chape of the saber EVERY frame?
there are 24 or something frames per s. 2 minutes of lightsabers turning and twisting thats gona take 2 weeks of work or so..

is this the only whay?
did they really do this in the starwars movies?

I checked my mask eight times, and started all over again but the problem is same, i clicked same buttons as you did step by step, but problem still! It is not really like blurring whole page, but whole comp becomes lighter when you try to blur the saber..
http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/1828/picture2qa2.png
http://img441.imageshack.us/img441/7320/picture1dc2.png
http://img406.imageshack.us/img406/9222/picture3ta6.png
Are you the one who made the very famous ryan vs dorkman movie? how did you do the cutting and, fire effects?

Thanks for all your help, i i needed was to set the solid layer to pureblack that is all with the bluring problem, now i will search for a video lighning tutorial

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fe76GvdA5eU

please help me for free tutorial after effect

Heres a link that will save u alot of time and trouble when making this effects its as simple as the click of a button http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials.html?id=40 just watch the vid he explains everything its alot easier then this although this might/probably gives alot better look but if ur looking to do something easy and quick for a client or something i sujest this RHY WORKS U PWN HARDCORE

hey do you know were i can get sound effects

one more thing. Whats a good program to put your footage in when your done editing it on After effects. Whats a good movie program to put in the sound effects and music and all my lightsaber clips together.

Can anybody recomend a good starter special effects kit that doesnt cost 999 bucks like the one he used lol? One that would preferably be able to do lightsabers?

I HAVE A PROBLEM . I CAN T FIND ADOBE AFTER EFFECTS
FIRST TIME I FIND AE ,BUT I CANNOT OPEN T. PLEASE HELP ME ,PLEASE

I have a small (?) problem.
When i switch between layer and composition ( about 9:14 in tutorial), i have got only black window and red cross in composition window.
Can you help me?

I provide screenshot
http://img262.imageshack.us/img262/7529/problemsx9.jpg

Maybe (i’m not sure,i use AAE 3 only for two days),before i find your tutorial i use another from this website http://www.metacafe.com/watch/400298/how_to_lightsaber_effect_video_tutorial/
and everything was good,but when i start AAE3 second time i find problems with every method which i try to use.

Ok ,everything works good.
I change my camera and all problems disappeared.
Thanks for you help.
And congratulations - you have the best lightsaber duels. The are just amazing.

Check your composition fps settings and make sure they match that of your footage. Check your render settings to make sure they match up too.

I did that as a favour to someone else’s film. I took some of the original Star Wars logos and edited a few things together, i seem to remember having recreate my own ‘T’ and maybe a few other characters. I think i got away with using Times New Roman and matching up the colour gradients and strokes.

Check out http://boards.theforce.net/fan_films/b10015/27942205/p1/?22

Hi,

Just keyframe it off the screen when you don’t want it.

Twirl down the mask properties, click the stopwatch next to mask shape to keyframe it’s shape/movement. This way you can move the mask on different frames to different places, just move the mask off the side of the visible composition when you don’t want it to be seen.

Alternatively, you could keyframe the opacity to 0 instead.

Hey,

Great tutorial, works really well =] How was it that you recorded your screen as you were running through the tut? As Ive looked for various programs but cant seem to find anything useful.

Cheers - Dave.

i am using AE 6.5 .. when i make adjustment layers they apply to the whole video .. how can i make them apply to only the mask?

Hello!
This was a tutorial made by a genius, indeed!
But, do you know a program to add sound to a specific frame.
As in:
Add “XXX.wav” to frame number 64 for example.

Kjetil

Hi Kjetil,

You can add sound to a frame in After Effects.

Just import your footage and position it to the correct frame like you would with any layer. Be sure to check your audio options in RAM previews and the final render.

Regards,

R.

Hi Joshua,

I’m pretty sure your problem is that your black solid layer is in fact, dark grey. Change it to pure black and see if it fixes your problem.

Regards

R.

Hi Buwar,

This is something i mention a little later in the tutorial, though i realise its a problem at that point. Basically, my footage is black at the beginning, so its not a problem. Just turn off the visibility on the very top footage layer, since it’s only a reference layer (or turn it into a guide layer for the same effect) and you should be good to go.

Regards

On your first picture, turn off the ‘eyeball’ on the top most layer (the second footage layer). It’s just being used as a guide, so we don’t really need it. You can even delete it after you’re happy with your rotoscoping if you like, but ultimately it’s just for our reference, so disable it. This way, when you precomp your cores comp into the colours comp, it’ll turn black.

Regards

Hi, I finished making my project and I was wondering how to save it. If you go File>Create Proxy>movie, then clicking…render I believe… it ends up getting all messed up, like the guy will swing his lightsaber but the ae saber won’t follow it at the same speed and then the main video resests itself back to where it should be and it gets messed up again.

You should render from the render queue, you may have frame rate issues if the clips aren’t lining up.

Contact flash details are in the first couple posts.

Is that the only way you can save your movie?

Hey I was wondering how you make the lightsabers flash when they hit each other also is there a way to make the lightsabers look like they turn on.

Hey man if you have made a subtraction mask on one frame and you don’t want it to be on the other frames how do you get rid of it later on? because i had to put a mask over my body so that the blade wouldn’t show and its cutting off the blade in an earlier part of my clip.

i’v tried that and it still shows up

I think i must be doing it wrong coz i’v hit the stop watch next to Mask Path shape and when i remove the the mask it still shows up

hey i can’t seem to get the lens flare to work. how do i get it to work?

If we need to make a lightsaber ignition in the dark, how can we elliminate the lightsaber body and create a glow in the dark generated by the weapon ?
P.S. The tutorial is awesome and it`s the best on the World Wide Web, thank`s for it

Hi,
I have a problem
the problem is that in the movie that i am making one scene has a light saber in it but then in the next scene the lighsaber is not in the cameras view. i took the mask off of the screen and that worked for the most part but then in another scene the color green(the color of the lightsaber) was showing i have figured out that it is a result of colors2 but i cannot figure out how to get it out of the frame for just that one scene.

thanks

Adobe stop supplying older versions of their software when a newer version is released. As such, CS3 is the current trial version available.

Ignore last post - I managed to clear the cached files.. all good.

Hi,

Do you use this “Impact Flare Method”?
Are that the Flashes when the sabers Clashing together?

How does that work exactly?

Dan

very coplicated for beginners like myself - can’t you just make a preset so a beginner can get to grips with rotoscoping instead of all the other stuff

When i go back to the composition the light doesnt come up it stays the same like when its not rendered

Nice tut. could you please give more details on how to do the flickering/pulsing of lightsaber cause your explanation is too brief. I tried to do it on the mask expansion but the core becomes very big and the becomes very thin. Plz man help!

Hi. I have a big problem.
I’m using AE 7 (just like You are), and I occur problems, that some options you use just do not work.
1. I don’t have the layer mode switch in timeline to change the layer to “screen” (When i open your tutorial file project it’s there, but In my “new” projects its not. I don’t have the “Trk mat” switch also.)
2. I simply can,t preview the effects added to the layer. When i turn the view to the “composition” viewport, The fill and blur modifiers just do not display there. I see only the image.
I don’t have the three timeline tabs ass well (timeline final etc.)

Please help, I have no idea how to turn this all on. Thankyou

No, no. I’ve been switching from the mask view to the composition view and haven’t seen the work results. But when I’ve turned the Screen mode on, the second problem repaired also. Thankyou for your help, and great tutorial:)

Hi Matt,

People often blur the lens flare to achieve a similar effect, you can experiment with the different kinds of lens flares to see which works better.

I don’t recall seeing the effect you mention so much in RvD2 as RvB, but generally if we’re talking about the same thing it’s done by adding an extra mask to the core layer.

The molten metal effect is actually explained in the behind the scenes footage you can get of RvD2, check out ryanvsdorkman.com for mroe info. I may also be able to touch upon this kind of thing in future tutorials.

With the two sabers touching, the bulb effect is usually created by adding another mask below the glow layers, and masking the shape out.

Oh.. one more thing. As far as coloring the props with tape. Do you recommend using flourescent duct tape? What is the best method to highlighting them? Right now Im using bright pink tape for either end and alternating green and white stripes the rest of the way.
And how do I get a better view of the ‘fan’ when they are being swung? There are times when I can’t even see the prop when its being swung too fast! Let alone trying to mask when the prop is pointing at the camera.. what a pain. I have a hell of a lot more respect for Star Wars after this!

Where to start Bob, where to start..

You need to look into your compression settings for file size. When you add your composition to the render queue, you can click on its render information. From here you’ll get a display that will let you choose from a list of file types to export to. Try a quicktime MOV file type, there’ll also be a menu that lets you choose the codec, try something like sorenson or H.264.

I imagine what you have at the moment is either uncompressed or in some lossless format. Decent compression will bring a 30 second clip down to 10-100mb or so, depending on what settings you use.

As for your thin issue, if you mean when rendering out of AE, then in the same area i just described you can check your resolution output settings. NOTE that you’re using the render queue, and not File > Export. That’s very important.

For the pipe. There’s a lot of different ways of cutting something in half. I can’t say for sure how they did it in Six in the Morning, different situations call for slightly differing techniques. Sometimes people secure their camera down with a tripod, record a copy of the background with no-one in it; put the actors and props into the scene and then film the actor slicing through the prop (often with a shortened blade). Then you can paint out the area where the prop used to be before you cut it, frame by frame, with the background plate you took. Often the bit of the prop flying away is just masked and animated out. This is a fairly low budget way of doing things. For example, in RvD2, they simply made a full CG replica of an arm. In Six in the Morning my guess would be that the pipe was cut in half to begin with, and that the prop blade just knocked it off as the guy hits it and then some post work was done to make it look more solid.

The duct tape idea is often used for props. Bright orange tends to work quite well. The tape will help with the fan, as will higher definition cameras and frame-rates. But it’s a common problem. Often in this situation you have to take a good guess. A good method is to mask the frames you can see, and then let AE automatically interpolate the mask between those frames (which it will do automatically). So say frames 1 and 4 in the fan are visible, mask them, and AE will auto-interpolate frames 2 and 3. Obviously you can’t do this with a massive number of frames inbetween or a massive movement from the prop, but if its the start and end of a fan movement, it works quite well, then you can tweak the results.

You can keyframe the position of the spark clip to follow the actor, in a similar way to keyframing the mask. Simply set keyframes every time you need the clip to move and it’ll stick to the places you set.

Hope this answers your questions adequately,

R.

Yes, thanks a lot. I actually did figure out the video clip keyframe thing last night.. I love when a plan comes together. I do know for a fact that the render is lossless.. I even changed the resolution to half (720×540) and it was just over a gig. I’ll try some other setting for rendering.

Isnt H.264 for HD? And can you briefly explain the different codecs? Like what makes one good over another. Thanks again.

Nice video Matt, mine won’t have quite as much effects though. So far its been 16 hours for 30 sec.. and counting.

More questions. Im trying to add a burn mark onto the floor where a saber hits, do I use Track motion or Stablize if I want something to look likes its staying on the footage.. I actually put what I have so far on Youtube here–> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuCz_LpU0uM

I cannot get the track motion to work right, I have tried several areas to track but it somehow gets lost during tracking. On the video, watch the burn mark on the floor.. arghh..

can you explain how did you do the saber ignition and retraction please? I did it with the hilt only but is looks so fake. please help!

Oh, BTW.. I also tested a blaster to saber deflect test.. comments please! Funny thing is that when I filmed it we had no idea about the blaster thing, I just wanted to render a fast moving saber. He almost swings it like a golf club very casually.. good times. http://www.vimeo.com/1616178

i have a problem,i did everything in the tutorial but at 12:10,after making a new composition,when he turn the mode to screen,the light saber change but mine,it change the whole video all little bright,not the saber,what did i did wrong?when he color balance,his saber turn all blue and mine turn the whole video blue,please help me

Hi, I am making a lightsaber video for my Video Production class. I have masked our saber props but I cannot seem to add color to the sabers. I am not quite so sure why though. I’ve followed exactly what Ryan has said but it still is a no go. Can somebody give me some advice?

hey it’s Johnny again i will say again thank you really but the last comment i was just wondering if the the color balance numbers that are for the compositions is there any color balance numbers u can plz give me for the red like ryan wieber’s like a really good one iv’e been trying and it’s really hard plz help!

Hi

Unfortunately i know nothing about MAGIX. The software i use for this effect is Adobe After Effects. The general principle is to create a mask and animate it to the object, frame-by-frame, with ‘keyframes’.

Hi

Sorry for the late response, the site has been having some problems and i’ve been elsewhere.

Ultimately i don’t have any set numbers for any other colours. There are hundreds of lightsaber videos with dozens of colours floating around that have been made in AE, and not many of them share the exact same numbers. People have gotten quite pain-staking over making an exact blue, but the other colours (except maybe red) are often not fussed over.

However, i can refer you to a thread with some 538 pages of lightsaber discussion generally in AE http://boards.theforce.net/fan_films_fan_audio_scifi_3d_forum/b10015/22056807/p1/?8070 you’ll find a lot from there.

Hey, The lightsaber effect i created succesfully is on throughout the whole clip i imported to after effects how do i take it of for the first frames where the lightsaber is not yet on screen

Hey guys does this work on the mac ive been searchin for months and ican fimd anything.

Hi.

This is something i mention a little later in the tutorial, though i realise its a problem at that point. Basically, my footage is black at the beginning, so its not a problem. Just turn off the visibility on the very top footage layer, since it’s only a reference layer (or turn it into a guide layer for the same effect) and you should be good to go.

can i ask something?
how come i dont have the black background that you have?
please help me! thank you a lot
^_^

There’s no downloadable version. There’s no plans to provide a downloadable version in the future.

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?

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

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?

Where did you get those lightsabersticks as in the film?

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.

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 .