Ryan W's Tutorial

It's been a while sence I needed it, but where can I find Ryan W's tutorial for making lightsabers in Adobe Photoshop?


-Iynx

 

why you can find it here on TFN







click the last "shocked" face

 

Thank you.


-Iynx

 

Actually, when I tried his AE tutorial, I couldn't memorize it completely (i could memorize most of it, but i'd do one thing wrong and screw up everything), but then I tried out the photoshop tutorial, and memorized it very easily. All you need to do is:

1. Create a new layer with mode set to screen and check the thing under the transfer mode. (I forget what it says exactly.)

2. Draw white stuff over the saber with either the pen tool, line tool, or paint tool.

3. Give the layer a gaussean blur of 1.

4. Duplicate it 3 times.

5. Give the second, third, and fourth layer gaussean blurs of 10, 20, and 30.

6. Merge down until you have "Layer 1" above "background".

7. Go to Image > Adjustments > Color Balance and play with the colors for midtones and highlights.

That's it.

Aaron

P.S.
People who don't want to download the tutorial or who don't have sound can use that written version of Ryan's photoshop saber tutorial.

 

Auctually, the numbers change. Obviously if the saber is closer to the camera, the glow will be more intense than if it's 50 feet away.
Here's how to judge how big your glow should be.

Right after you have all of your white cores on a black background, use the line tool to measure how big the sabers are when still. Don't count it when the sabers are fanned. Just get the width when they are still.

Let's assume for this case that our core width is 15 pixels on average.
Gausuan (sp?) blur your core 1 tenth of your line width. 1.5 in this case.

Duplicate your layer three times.
On the first layer, blur it equal to your line width. In this case, 15.

Second layer: blur it twice your line width. 30 in this case.

Third Layer: Blur it three times your line width. 45 in my case.

By now, if you've been working on a filmstrip longer than 60 frames, your computer will begin to hate you, and a simple blur can take up to a full minute to finish.

After you're done, merge your four lightsaber layers into one. CTRL+B for color balance, and set your midtones to 100, and highlights to 50.

There you go.

 

When I first started doing lightsabers, I made the mistake of going through and rotoscoping a 12 second filmstrip...When I got done each of the blurs took about 10 minutes to complete and saving the file took about 20 minutes, and that's on a 1.5GHz P4 w/256 MB ram. Luckily I found Ryan_W's After Effects tutorial!

 

so how do you guys do the fanned sabers?

when i do it they always turn out dodgy...

is there a part in ryan_W's tutorial that tells you how to do that?

if so could you please provide a text version of it

 

So, which way is better overall? After effects or Photoshop? I don't care which is less time consuming, but which one yields the better results.

 

Well both methods are excelent, but...you know I dont think I ever compared them before. One might produce a more taper auroa but im not sure, they both seem to come out with the same effect. except that on the AE one it jumps from a feather of 10, 20, to 40

So that could be the result of it being more taper...OH I DONT KNOW! Im confusing myself.








*Loads up Photoshop*

 

i never got the after effects version to work, in ryans tutorial he uses the pentool as kind of a polygonal marker but it doesnt perform that way at all on my aftereffects.... i have no clue what the problem is...

 

its not garian blur its featheing hte mask
1
10
20
40
in after effects.
photo shop is
1
10
20
30
here is both

 

Daft, what's wrong with geocities? The movie isn't hosted there, its just a link to download. The actual film is on dodgeoffice.net.

JPEG? Okay I can do that.

 

dark_lord_biped, you can use either mask feathering or gaussian blur, or fast blur. They all produce similar results.

Aprentize, this is a problem a lot of people were having back a while ago and I posted a revised text method then. But that was long ago and I don't know where the thread is, so...


LIGHTSABERS IN ADOBE AFTER EFFECTS: ROTOSCOPING THE BLADE
Ryan Wieber, Steve (Link64PD)

Open After Effects and create a new Composition (Composition > New Composition...) set to the same pixel size, time length and pixel aspect ratio as your footage you want to rotoscope.

Import your footage into the Composition by going File > Import > File...

If necessary, in the switches panel, set the footage's display quality to best.

In the timeline, double click the footage's name so it will present itself in it's own footage window.

In the toolbox, click the Pen tool. (If the toolbox is not visible, go Window > Tools)

In the new window for the footage, draw a mask to define the area of your lightsaber by clicking each corner of your lightsaber refrence prop and then clicking the point you first created to close the mask. (If your lightsaber prop is not visible in the first frame of your footage, draw the mask off of the footage's canvas.

Click the triangle next to your footage's name in the timeline window, and then click the triangles next to Masks and then Mask 1.

Click the stopwatch next to Mask Shape. (This allows us to set keyframes for the mask we just created so it can change shape over time)

Using the Time Controls palette (Windows > Time Controls) move forward through time to a frame where you want to add a new keyframe.

In the toolbox, click the Selection tool (represented by a standard cursor arrow) and then click anywhere off of the canvas in the footage window to deselect all the currently selected points on the mask.

Click (hold) on the corner of the mask you want to move first and drag it to to the approproate corner of the lightsaber refrence prop in this new frame in time and release. Do the same to the other corners of the mask so that the mask once again defines the area of the lightsaber refrence prop. (If your saber was originally out of view, make sure to go back one frame before your blade is visible and add another keyframe of the points off of the visible canvas. Otherwise the saber will gradually move to the new kayframe over time)

Tip: At this time you may want to use the Time Controls palette to move back through time over the course of your animation to ensure that the mask fully surrounds the lightsaber refrence prop on every frame between the keyframes you just set. If the mask does not move how you want it, you can set more keyframes by moving to a frame in time where your mask neds the most correction and simply update the mask by moving the corners to where they should be.

Again using the Time Controls palette, continue moving forward through time, setting keyframes to update your mask as you go until you have keyframes your lightsaber over the entire duration of your clip. If you come to a time where your lightsaber is obscured or blocked by something in a way that "breaks it in two" requiring two different parts of the lightsaber to be seen (for instance, swings behind your actor's arm) for now just draw the saber as if you could see right through the thing/person to the whole lightsaber. We'll handle this problem once the rotoscoping is finished.

Note: For frames where your lightsaber is completely obscured or out of frame so that none of it is visible, position the mask completely off of the footage's canvas. If the lightsaber is out of view for more than one frame, you can move the mask off the canvas, skip ahead to the next frame the lightsaber is visible, update the mask, then move back in time one frame and reposition the mask to be off of the footage's canvas again in the same area it was before.

Tip: Some shots require more keyframes than others. In a saber shot with lots of motion like a fight scene or blast

 

Photoshop is defidently better when doing the glow. It's infinitly easier to tweak the colors and other details in PS. However it can be done almost exactly the same way in AE, but it seems to be easier in PS. When creating the blades though, After Effects takes the cake.

 

I'd say it's equally easy to tweak the settings in AE. Especially if you've already finished the hard work and want to experiment. Faster as well.

 

never got the after effects version to work, in ryans tutorial he uses the pentool as kind of a polygonal marker but it doesnt perform that way at all on my aftereffects.... i have no clue what the problem is...

You have AE 4.1 huh? My problem too.

See you CANT PAINT wit the pen tool in the composition view in AE 4.1!!

So do this instead:

1. Duplicate your footage layer

2. Double-click the top one, that will show that "footage item" window. THERE you can draw your masks.

3. When happy, apply the "Fill" filter to the layer, with White. Do all the rest of the stuff as per the Ryan tutorial.

/Z