"Force" Lightning - Test and Tutorial

That was pretty f'ing awesome Spiff.

we get a big glob of lightning looking all glob-like and globbing towards its opponent, where it forms a glob and globs on them.

 

Nice work Spiff..That was sweet!!!

 

Insanely impressive. That looks better than the force lightning in Episode III.

 

"...and found a thread where you kinda went off on a rant about crappy sounds"

yeah, i do that.


the sounds aren't really force lightning sounds, but the visuals aren't really force lightning visuals. it has a sort of tesla coil look to it, and the sound fit that.

reminds me of a deleted scene on the x2 dvd, of jubilee in the museum

 

Awesome Spiff, that looks great.

 

On-set lights kick ass. Way to go.

 

Not the channel blow out banding you get when a channel hits the ceiling, and the human eye picks up the discrepancy in the luminance derivative.

What you need is something that smoothly compresses into white, not hard-walls into it. Unless you "want" that look, but that generally only works in some situations, and poorly if one channel blows before you blow the total into white... you get the classic "ugly red/green/blue blobby fringe around nice white blowout"

Why not do it right with luminance compression?

Not saying screen is "right", it's way too "wimpy" looking, never "cuts" nicely. As a matter of fact, many sabers in Revelations were done in "Add" or "Linear Dodge" for the "bite", while some "additional glow layers" were thrown on in "screen".

Fine, but keep in mind no amount of tweaking in the lower layers (except making them black ) will make raw "Add" on top of video doing anything even remotely resembling "correct".

Bill Spitzak explains it best here (with perdy pictures) why light math should be done in real linear. Notice his exposure tests done with simple sRGB => linear => sRGB conversions, and how amazingly okay it turns out, and how horrendeously horrid the "work in raw sRGB pretending it's linear" turns out.

I also like that overhead shot of LA with the exposure change, first in plain sRGB-pretending-to-be-linear and then converted to linear, re-exposed, and back. You immediatly recognize ther really ugly result of the former in a lot of bad f/x work. The whole feel of the mids blowing mindlessly into the ceiling thing.

Last time I looked eLin was free for non commercial use(!)

The best is probably Colossus 5D but people tend to miss the "suprising greatness" of the hue/saturation tool. While I most often simply use "curves" for color correction (because I tend to dislike the cumulative error of going into certain color bands and tweak), the "Hue/Saturation" tool has a functionality many/some don't even know.

See that box up there that says reds, yellows, blues? You'd think it's just a preset to apply to only the blues? Well, it is.. but this does NOT mean all the other settings go away, as one would have thunk! Au contraier, hue/saturation maintains SEPARATE settings for each of these "sub-color-ranges" (which are all changeable in themselves too).

So if you want to make your "Blues" more saturated, the "reds" more yellow, the "greens" more desaturated and the "purples" pushed towards blue... YOU CAN DO all that... AT THE SAME TIME! Perdy neat, and oft overlooked.

/Z

 

*sigh* Zap just spanked my previous argument. I hate it when that happens. I also hate demo versions... there's always a catch.

"Note: eLin has a highly sophisticated tracking device built-in that automatically detects whether any money has been made from its use

LOL. Well, either it's watermarking or it isn't. This seems a rather bold statement though. See - if it's spy ware, there's no way I want it. *downloads*

I'll try to render a few things with it sometime to see if it's worth it for this kind of compositing. Obviously a lot can be faked.

-Spiff

 

You da man, Spiff. That was really cool, esp. in High Def.

My only _really_ nitpicky thing is that the strobe lighting did the same thing
every time, regardless of the angle of your hand, i.e. whether or not
your hand should have been blocking the light a bit
in one direction or another, you still had the same strobe
light on the surroundings. ... but that's _really_ picky, I imagine
that taking all the extra time to "fix" that detail would have no cinematic impact whatsoever.

Very cool stuff ... Ah, Steve, when are you going to stop messing around with that
physics stuff and go into film for real?

 

Then never disagree with me. Simplifies matters immensly

(just kidding)

Stu has a sense of humor.

No, it neither watermarks nor spies, but it does have a once-per-launch little nagpop. VERY little too.

If you are like me and never shut your computer or AE down, you wouldn't know it was there.

If you are already at 16BPP, then go eLin for sure, IMHO. The fact you must use 16bPP is the main "issue" with eLin. If you are already, there is simply no reason not to use it.

I can every day watch a feature film, and spot the non-linear f/x. When you learn their "look" (and your eyes learn it remarkably fast) you spot it immediately.

Make sure to use the "compressed" mode, which compresses overbrights in a kewl way. Thats the whole point, really, because without that, you can just "fake" eLin with the levels and gamma plugins.

/Z

 

hey im new to this whole editing thing and i dont understand. what do u make the lightning with and can u use final cut Express HD? i need some help.

if u can help please email me whenever u have time

downswing90@yahoo.com

 

Mikeyspad - Welcome to TFN!

The effect was done in After Effects - I'm not sure if it'd be possible to achieve this result in Final Cut Pro due to the lack of certain plug-ins. FCP is more of an editing program whereas AE is made for compositing and effects work. However there are many ways to create lightning in a host of different applications up in the tutorial sticky.

Hope that helps!

 

Very nice Spiff! That was a nice effect and the tutorial is not all that bad.

 

I would like to use eLin, however, I have only version 5 of AE.

I'm missing a bunch of the useful stuff. I may upgrade to 6.5 when the next version comes out.

 

That's because Linead Dodge and Add are the exact same function. Photoshop does not have a blending mode called Add, so After Effects uses Linear Dodge to match Photoshop.

 

...any news? ok bump for some of those u cant find it in tutorials page

 

Which version of AE is the advanced lightning plugin in?

 

Well, Spiff... I just watched this test.


Yeah.
You suck.




I mean that in the most un-literal/insanely impressed way as possible, but yeah.
You suck.

=)
-Vaportrail

 

Thanks for keeping me grounded Vapor.

I know the Advanced Lightning filter was in versions 6.0 Pro and up... (? See Funk's post below). Note that much of this probably could have been achieved with the normal Lightning filter as well.

-Spiff

 

Advanced Lightning's also in the 5.5 production bundle.

 

Which directory?

EDIT: whoops, i have 5.0 pb.

 

What is the diffference in adv. lightning to lighning?

Could you do the strobe effect on the computer(keying brightness up and down; interval of about 2 or 3 frames)?

Why is their a strobe effect, if the lightning is at the same brightness all the time; it just changes position? Wouldn't it be better to have a moving light turning on when he turns the lightning on?

 

Could you do the strobe effect on the computer(keying brightness up and down; interval of about 2 or 3 frames)?

Do the test youself - pick one of the non-strobe frames and try to brighten it up to the level of a strobed frame. There's an intricacy and believability of real light you won't be able to obtain by doing it as an effect. Not only is the frame brighter, but there are new shadows, different contrast, and the since the flash bulb is reflected in my eyes, there's a reflection consistent with the lightning that I didn't have to add.

I spent about $25 on strobes to do this. To replicate the effect well, I'd probably require several days worth of painstaking rotoscoping for an effect that would never match that achieved practically. Strobes are also the bomb at dance parties, when all your female friends come over (as if that ever happens to me)

Why is there a strobe effect, if the lightning is at the same brightness all the time;

You'll note, my lightning wasn't the same brightness all the time. Sometimes it's there, sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's extremely bright, other times it's much less intense.

Wouldn't it be better to have a moving light turning on when he turns the lightning on?

If you had a second person they could move and adjust the strobes as you saw fit. This was me sitting on a chair, the lights hanging on a music stand, with me flicking a power bar trying to turn the lights on and off in sync with my 'acting'. A properly directed crew could work wonders into adding more interactivity into the lighting.

-Spiff

 

*BUMP*

Well, sorta. The original hosting for all of the files involved in this test dried up. All the relevant files are now here:

http://phispace.net/spiffyprod/FLT/

If a mod could change the links in the original post, that would be awesome. If not, oh well.

-Spiff

 

Oh well...a stupid question , but how can you make night from day? in you case, those pictures