The Lightsaber Effects Thread

Well, Clone Wars' sabers are getting better.

Season 1:
[image=http://img543.imageshack.us/img543/4003/vlcsnap2010100108h59m47.png]

Last week's episode, Season 3:
[image=http://img834.imageshack.us/img834/5900/vlcsnap2010100108h43m54.png]


So that's something.

 

Does anybody have the short raw footage clip from RvD1?

 

Notice that the blade is in 3D perspective but the glow around it is not. Man if you're gonna make a 3D cartoon, EVERY element in it should be done in 3D as well... at least in my never-popular opinion.

Nope, don't care how hard that would be to do for the FX peeps/animators. Don't care one bit.

 

Here yo go.

 

Thanks!

 

I bought a new, pretty cheap, HD camera. and i shot this. It's basically just a playaround to test quality, and very rusty rotoscoping skills.


This is Just a Test

He Who Sees Voices,
Draconis

 

[image=http://thegamecast.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/maulkiller.jpg]
I didn't save my results, but I messed around with white sabers in an old project file after playing through TFU2. The Maulkiller skin, eh, whatever, but I found myself using/liking the look of the silver saber crystals quite a bit.

To achieve a white saber that looked luminous, I took the basic saber setup prior to color balance, tacked on an adjustment layer switched to Add. I got some weird results. Nothing would happen at first, but then I applied Levels to the Adj layer and before I even did anything, the saber would be totally blown out. Not sure what was going on there, but I tweaked the Gamma switch until it had the right consistency. For a bit of extra brightness, I added some blue highlights to taste to get that ever-so-slight bit of bright aura right around the core. It helps it pop a bit.

One of my film ideas does call for a whitesaber, so it's good to know it's workable if I ever shoot that movie.
Maybe the next LCC, just cuz.

 

Hm. Found this dusty ol' thread tucked away on page 4. Brought it out since I was playing with the daysaber method some today:
[image=http://img263.imageshack.us/img263/7748/image89fx.png]


Red's not quite red enough, gotta work on the base color some more, but I'm liking it overall. I could probably stand to make the blue pop a bit more as well. Contact flare is on screen mode.

 

That's not bad at all, Vapes.

Happen to have the original to play around with?

Andy

 

Always.
[image=http://img696.imageshack.us/img696/2897/image89u.jpg]

 

Um, Vapes? Your blade is inside hers, why is she not dead?

 

Because he preferred to keep that nice little tangle going on instead of killing her. I'd do the same.

 

^^Win^^

 

My take on it.

Click on image.
[image=http://img703.imageshack.us/img703/8310/vaportrailroto7b.jpg]

And with the original colors from what shots you used to post!

Click on image.
[image=http://img824.imageshack.us/img824/4144/vaportrailroto7c.jpg]



Andy

 

Heh nice.
I was worried they looked too bright but part of the difference is just how close up this shot is. It's an illusion that the core is brighter, when in fact there's just more of it. I like my red okay, but I'm loving the saturated blue aura hugging the core on yours. That looks really good.

Good color coverage, btw. I will be needing that green in this location as well.

 

Vapes,

My thoughts exactly! The proximity of the swords to the camera prompted me to add another layer. I duplicated my normal Linear Dodge layer, blurred it out to ninety pixels, and dropped its opacity to 50%. This gave a little more pop to the color away from the sword without being too much right next to it.

I like your red a lot too! The cores are a little bright on mine, but I also noticed you changed the contrast on yours between the original and finished shot.

As far as contact flashes go, I get good results from doing subtle linear dodges rather than screen.

Looking forward to seeing more; if you have more raw images to work with, I'd love the opportunity to practice on them to compare techniques.



Andy

 

One day, Vapes will get a DSLR, and shoot in 60FPS, meaning he will have not only ONE screen grab, but 60 per second. I'll do a test and/or duel this summer in 60FPS to check out how it works. Sure, the T2i might have a rolling shutter, but paired with a 50mm f/1.4 lens and high shutter speeds, we'll suffer less distortion than with a stock lens.

 

Okay, but they still don't look half as good

 

I was running through a few 3DS Max tutorials and stumbled across reference to the glare output shader for the Mental Ray renderer. I played around with a few settings and quickly produced a couple of simple glowing objects. (Yes, they would also illuminate a scene around them)

[image=http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b378/corrin_wyndryder/Sabers.jpg]

What do you think?

 

Looks like Return of the Jedi.

 

This song was created out of lightsaber effects

Future Lab Rats - Vader's Saber
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNqiI2fuFvQ

 

Very Nice

 

Here is my version of the photo provided by a user some years ago.

[image=http://i1143.photobucket.com/albums/n637/Bushy162/Screenshot2011-10-23at135645.png]

The method is blue solid (far away) copied three times, fast blurred 10, 20, 30, 40. Then orange (close up) fast blurred 40, 80, 160, 360, i.e 4x that of small saber.
Then, the opposite concept is applied for the colour balanced white. For the far away one, it's 40, and for the close one it's 10, 1/4 of the small saber.

 

Said user will be hence forth known as VaporTrail lol.