An FX question

I've Googled this, but couldn't find exactly what I'm looking for.

In AOTC, there were a few shots where the Clones were fighting the Droids in a dust cloud, and their blaster fire was illuminating the surrounding dust. I want to do an effect like that of two Jedi fighting in a fog and their sabers glow in the surrounding fog.

Any tips?

 

Do you have real fog while shooting? If so you could somehow place a flourescent light near your sabers that illuminates the fog and later rotoscope it out.

Another method would be roughly masking out the fog and color balance it. I´ve never tried it but it could work.

 

Well, one of the fighters is CG, so that might not work out. And the basic plugin for volume fog in 3DS Max doesn't react to light.

The compostite mask might work... maybe... but I was wondering if there was a way to do it completely in Max.

 

Well...I don´t have Max but in Electric Image you can animate an object, make it invisible and apply a glow to it so that only the glow is visible. It should be possible in Max to I guess.

 

The masking thing might work, a few rendering passes, and it could work.

 

Yeah try that.