Lightsaber Flicker

Hello all, I'm sure I posted this once but I can't find it, so here i go again

Basically, I've been involved in a film project with my brother for his A-Level Film And Drama course. Being a big Star Wars fan he opted to do a short but sweet fan film. We have shot most of the footage, but to test the FX I did a few lightsaber tests. They came out great as I'm using Photoshop 7 After Efects and Premiere among other things, but there was one thing missing that they had in the films, the flicker!

I have tried to "flicker" the glows and core manually, but the work is long and tedious to say the least and the results while good, are not realtime enough to be realstic looking, so in short, do any of you know of a plug-in or a plug in that already exists that can do this kind of effect?

Many Thanx

 

Do you mean you want your sabers to flicker subtly like when not moving very much?

 

It's not really a big deal to make the saber flicker...I mean don't get me wrong I think it looks good, but people dont really notice it to much on regular scene shots. I dont really know how to do it on any other program but Photoshop, but if your gonna do it for just "short" close shots, your better off doing it like that.

 

If your creating the lightsabers in AE, following that excellent tutorial in the FF boards,

then all you need to do, is before copying and pasting the layers with the varied mask feathers, you should create random key-frames with varied Opacity values.

Off the top of my head i'd say random values between 90 - 100 % opacity.

 

My saber test clip got some pretty good responses, mostly relating to the flicker.

Check it out here

For what it's worth, this flicker effect was done by purposely being inaccurate with the rotoscoping durng times when the saber isn't moving much. I have a feeling that, that's the tedious part that you were complaining about. 8^)

 

Thanx for the clip, I think I've seen it b4 in a different post Anyways, I'm pretty sure I saw something somewhere on the web that told how to get a flicker effect using a plug-in, I can't remember if it was an existing plug-in or a custom one, but I swear it existed. Dammit, it's so frustrating

You may not think the flicker is important but it does add effect to the finished film and gives the saber a more life-like appearance. I will give your idea a try Eclipse and see what sort of results I can get with it, but any more input would be greatly appreciated!

Thanx

 

I found good results by using the Wiggler effect in AE. Basically, you pick one of your layered masks and put 2 keyframes in the mask scale properties. One at the beginning and another one at the end of the clip. Then you select both keyframes and apply the wiggler. It will then apply keyframes based on the rate you supply and also amplitude of the change. Then it applies the keyframes and causes the mask to grow and shrink rapidly, thus giving the flicker effect. You can get even more dynamic effects by applying the wiggler with different setting on the different feathered layers.

Oh yeah- you need the Production Version of AE to get the Wiggler.

Later-
Jeremy

 

Duality used the Aged Film effect by ICEfx.

Here is how.

 

I use IceFx and it works great.

 

Is the ICEfx Aged Effect free?? I think I have one but I don't think its by ICEfx and every time I adjust one of the sliders AE crashes, but then I'm having probs with my comp at the moment so

I will have a look for it and see if I can get it to work

 

Hahahaha, I better forget that idea then, it looks like I ned to buy $12,000 worth of software and hardware, no way I got that money, but I know someone who has the production bundle version of After Effects, so I will give that a try. If that fails, he is a busy man you see and lives quite afar away, is there anything else I can do??

If not, it looks like its the manual job again, :'(

 

Manual job, eh?

Anyhow, for those AE people looking for the saber flicker (or holograph flicker which is the same thing) look through page 3 of the tutorial in my sig, you may get the idea

Carl

 

The best way would be:

Put little amount of green glow in after effects(works for any lightsaber color). Apply random value on the glow intensity.

 

Thanx for the replies guys, I'll try some of that at some point! Right now I'm in need of another job fast, so i won't be doing any roto-ing or editing for a bit, also, its nice to see I don't have to shell out to get a nice flicker

Oh, I looked at your tutorial on the holo flicker, when applied, does this actually make the image disappear? If so, I would need to adjust it so it wouldn't disappear but just reduce it's glow.

I have had another look at the sabers in the films and it appears that the glow flickers isn't a intensity or vibrance thing but more of a reach thing. The sabers glow doesn't dull, it just narrows and widens erratically and periodically.

Well anyways, thanx guys, I'll try all the stuff listed herer at some point in the next 2 weeks and shout ya if I get some sexy saber flickers!

Laterz!