I used to do a lot of this a while back, and someone sent me some footage of his film, and i was bored, and thought i'd have a crack. got some good results, except, due to the way I paint it in Photoshops FRAME BY FRAME lol, the blur of the sabers leak into other frames, so if you see some random blurs at the top and bottom of the screen, you know why lol. I believe in this video, I added contact flashes too...cant remember....next stage...sound effects

tell us what you think.

http://s41.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=1...L3DOPOE0J8VQ6O

Looks good, and the contact flashes look good too, which I find is rare with amateur lightsaber rotoscoping. What did you use for a flash?

I cant take credit for the flash. On the TFN Forums *theforce.net* a user made this flash for people to use at will, as it's hard to make a flash, if you have no idea how! lol. Still, I think it works well, and I might find some more footage of people hitting each other with sticks, and scope that. So, if any of you film makers out there have any footage of sword fights etc, send them my way, and i'll saberise them, if it's good enough. heh

Very impressive.

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haveing done this my self i see i dealt with you must do now, im guessing you used adobe photoshop in flm format, that would explain why the Light layer after applying glow shows up on the other side of the frame.

Next time you do this remember to Markey the outer edges of the frames on the saber layer and delete the light glow thats bleeding to the opisite edge of the next frame.


beyond that good job

www.compugears.com/jedi_karma.wmv
my attempt at the time when i first did it to try en learn the tech a few years ago,

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I am impressed with this. I know you mentioned them but why are the random flashes there at top and bottom of the frames? What is your workflow that might cause these? I can appreciate that using a .flm in Photoshop you will have all the other frames in close proximity but not sure why you would paint onto them.

either way, I'll be interested in your workflow and what effects you used to get the glow in Photoshop. Any particular plagins used?

And now to the killer tip.... What I've never seen in any home produced light sabre battles is the glow of the light sabre actually lighting up the handlers features - which it surely would if such things existed. A workflow that included that would impress me indeed! Probably not too difficult to do in PS tbh.

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Brill..... how long does that take to make?

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well...that was a 4 second clip. It had about 170 frames to it, which needed to be masked individually! Once I masked one saber, gaussian blurred it countless times and changed colour levels....I then had to repeat the whole process for the red saber, and apply the same blurs and levels. We are talkin about 2-3hrs for that. I once entered a rotoscoping competition on Theforce.net, which was a shot from Phantom Menace, so I had to repeat the process 3 times, as it had qui-gon, obi wan and darth maul in it...sigh....

I use a tutorial off the net to do this, and it's a case of making it a filmstrip file in premiere, then photoshopping it. I dont think it needs any plugins, only 3 layers, one for a tight aura, one for a loose aura and one for the core. Simply building up layers of Gaussian blur and changin the colour levels for the saber. Sounds easy, but it takes ages if your not photoshop savvy.

The reason why the blur is filtering into other frames, is due to the gaussian blur going over the frame and finishing in another. Once I have changed the levels, photoshop doesnt know that it's going over into another frame, so it doesnt cancel out the mask in other frames, thus the annoyin marks at the edges of the screen *god i hope this makes sense*

If anyone wants the tutorial to do this, let me know and i'll find it, and post it on here. Just a note, if rotoscoping, I recommend learning it in Adobe After Effects as it's supposed to me 10 times faster, due to the keyframing, but I havent got my head around it, so i'll stick with photoshop for now.

I'll stop muttering on now. Lol...far too much to read for one nite!

Cool, I don't think i'd have the time to try something like that, not yet anyway. Just left of subject a bit, has anyone seen the "starwars kid" and read the story behind it?

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yes! poor kid, well, it was stupid of him firstly filmin him self twirling, then leaving the tape in the camera! haha, bless