HOW TO MAKE LIGHTSABERS 2.0

So far I've only seen tutorials on how to make single-handed sabers. (Not that I'm not grateful of course.)

I was just browsing the plumbing isle in Home Depot after reading the Padawan Guide article.


We want to have a saber staff in our film that, for one part, I seperate into two blades, perhaps by twisting it apart at the center.

Not breaking it, just twisting. In others, the "real" thing would be meant to do that.


Anyone know of any saber staff tutorials?


I don't have enough money to experiment...

Thanks

 

Actually, with the current price cut when it went universal, it is now much more affordable for people to buy. I believe it is in the range of Adobe AfterEffects or maybe a little cheaper.

Andrew

 

He made that statement on November 5th, 2005. Shake was still pretty damn high in price up until about a month ago. Learn to think 4th dimensionally.

 

I won't go so far as to do that. But I am gonna ask for help. I want to make a lightsaber movie with my friends. It is gonna have to be a no-budget film. My uncle has a DV camcorder ( a pretty nice one too) that I can use. I also have some toy lightsabers (I know, no ideal--but I already have them so I am gonna use em--can't afford anything else). I don't have AE or anything that costs money, but I have figured out how to roto stills using gimpshop and they look pretty good. [image=http://img481.imageshack.us/img481/7546/lightsaberty4.jpg]
So...
I don't want to roto each frame by hand. I have access to Linux and Jahshaka. I also have Gimpshop and an old Photoshop (5.5LE). Any way I can make a movie without taking a year to roto each frame?

 

Even in AE you have to roto nearly every frame.

 

So there's no shortcut? No kind of keyframing system to make it easier?

Right now, it takes about 30min/frame. At 24fps, that's 12 hours of work per second of film. So it really is gonna take a year to make the movie?

 

There IS a keyframing system, but when there's any kind of significant motion at all you have to go frame by frame. And holy crap, thirty minutes a frame? You should be able to shave that down to ten or fifteen seconds.

 

How? I'm following the instructions I found
Here..


The instructions applied to Gimpshop perfectly, but takes about 30 minutes.

 

Even in gimp, that shouldn't take more than a minute. It's a pretty simple process.

Start with unprocessed picture.
New Layer.
Draw a thick white line over saber in the new layer.
Duplicate that layer.
Colorize the duplicated layer to green.
Blur the duplicated layer by a factor of two.
Duplicate the blurred green layer.
Blur THAT layer by a factor of two.
Keep duplicating and blurring till you've got about five or six layers.
Change ALL layer's blending modes to "screen" or "add" or "lighten" or whatever gimp calls it.

That's it. Really shouldn't take you 30 minutes.

 

Well...
I did find a script for Gimp that automatically creates a lightsaber effect on the selected area. So all I do is select the blade and hit the lightsaber button. The results aren't as good as when I do it the hard way, but when the blade is moving quickly, it looks pretty good.

Thanks for the advice though.

 

Why do that, though? The glow is the easy part. You still have to do all the masking, correct?

Might as well make the glow look great. That's what sells it, as long as you masking is on target.

 

I'm not sure why but I've followed a tutorial for Photoshop of a site thats similar to Webbers tutorial. But when I use the polygonal lasoo for the "sweeping blade" effects, it stops me from editing the film. In other words, once I use it it doesn't show colour changes or anything. Can anyone help?

Also, in Webbers tutorial he makes a new layer, then draws the line over the blade on the same layer. Yet when I draw a line it creates a new layer for each and every one. Why is this?

I'd appreciate any help you guys can give.

Much obliged.

 

Movie

Done in AE 5.5 Last December.

CC Please.

Steven

 

pretty nice. sabers are a bit to bright for the environement. I could be a critic about Choreography and camera qualifications, but that doesn't relate to the topic.

PM me if you want all that

EDIT: that post should have been placed in the LS Efeects thread

 

My bad.

 

...you're pretending to be a mod in here aswell?

 

That is what I was going to say.

SB

 

all hail the mighty Dorkman!!!

 

sweet movie!

 

I know it's been a while since you asked this, but I just read it now, and saw that no one had answered you (at least not in this thread). From what I understand, you're finding that when you're drawing a line in GIMP, it is putting it on a separate layer from the new layer you're creating over the source image. The thing is, a line is a separate kind of object from what would appear in a regular layer, and therefore (from the program's perspective) needs its own, special, kind of layer (you may have noticed that you can't edit it like a normal layer, and it may even have different symbols next to it, etc.). It needs to be changed to a regular type of layer first, and to do that, you need to rasterize the object. This will turn it from an editable line object (which, like text layers, is not pixel-based) to an editable pixellated image, which you can then merge down onto your new layer. Kind of an annoying technicality, but when doing other operations, it's helpful that the program has that setting in place.

When you try to merge the line down into the new layer, the program may give you a prompt, asking you if you want to rasterize it. If that doesn't do it, there's a control for it somewhere, in one of the menus. Right-clicking might even do it for you. Knowing that you have to do it, and that you'll then be able to work with it in the way that you want to, though, I think is the important part. I hope this helped (despite its being a little late!)!

Take care,
Sojourn

 

here is a lightsaber test i did using Brandeni's Paint method.

hope you like it..


http://www.yousendit.com/download/Qyg7tTTH4oB5TA%3D%3D

 

Here is my tutorial on the fastest and easiest way to rotoscope lightsabers in after effects.

Download 50 megs
http://www.mediamax.com/soundsforsamplers/Hosted/smallrototut.wmv

or
Stream
http://forcefx.proboards43.com/index.cgi?board=filmmaking&action=display&thread=1166180782

 

Hey, guys i decided to make a 2nd test using brandeni's method .

its kinda longer ...please feel free to let me no what i could do to improve it.


http://download.yousendit.com/ED0935A87970B8A8

 

Hi,

This being my first post, I don't want to sound like an 11 year old. (Which I am not)
(If there is another place where I should be posting this, please tell me)
I've read through the whole first post, and the welcome newbies thread, (I found this site after I started rotoscoping) and check ed out the links. (BTW, if any of you want LIA+, this website is temporarily hosting it: )

I've gone through these methods so far:

This is too slow, especially since for some reason my copy of Photoshop 6 won't open filmstrips, so I had to do rotoscope one .tif file at a time.
Then I tried this one, but it didn't work because for some reason the F# keys wouldn't work.

I am now using this, but it also pretty slow, and doesn't give the best results.

Is there a way to do it faster? I'm not asking to not have to do it frame by frame, simply wondering if there is some reason why the F keys didn't work in the second method I tried, but they are now, and if there is some reason photoshop won't open the filmstrip. Perhaps I missed one of the steps in the tutorial....

I have Photoshop 6, Photoshop Elements 3.0 (I think), and Adobe Premiere 3.0 (I think), and I'm using a Win. 2000 for the rotoscoping, and an XP for running Premiere.

Thanks,

Rotolabor

 

I would suggest that you go download the trial of After Effects, and then try this method, which, if done "right", looks waay better than the filmstrip photoshop method.

I hope that helps, and welcome to the boards.

SB