Star Wars Light Saber
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| Author: Snake H. | | Skill Level: Expert |
| Application: Adobe After Effects |
| Version: AE 4.0 Pro or later |
| Project Files: No Project Files | | Movie Sample: View Quicktime | | Plug-ins Used: No third party plug-ins used
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Note: You'll need Toy sword,
(wooden sword or stick if you want to fight with it), ping
pong balls and white
tape or paint.
Instructions
- Make
your light saber! Get your sword and paint the blade white or cover it with white tape,
attach a ping pong ball to the tip of the blade and one to the base
of the blade.
- Shoot
your Jedi action!!
- Bring
your footage into AE.
Apply the "lightning" effect to your footage, put the start point at
the base of the blade and the end point at the tip. tweak the lightning
settings to get your desired blade, the settings i used were as follows:
segments:3
amplitude:0.256
branching:0
rebranching:0
width: whatever looks good and the rest of the settings at the defaults.
-
Looking for more? Check out Ryan-W.com for
some tips on making cool special effects like lightsabers!
To animate
the blade either track the start and end points in the motion tracker
(using ping pong balls) or animate them manually. I found that for action
sequences manually animating the start and end points was more efficient
and for stiller shots i used the tracker.
- Light
saber kick up/down.
To kick up your light saber simply animate the lightning end point to
go from the handle to the length of the blade, I found 4 frames to be a
good speed. oh yeah, its best to use just the HANDLE of a sword for the
kick up/down shots.
- Show
your friends how damn good you look holding a light saber!! Luke who!!??!?
