Ok, so the After effects version of how to make lightsabers. This process of corse requires rotoscoping yes, but its alittle different from the others where we draw a line over the prop saber.
Get your media in a timeline. Click Layer->New->Solid. Just click ok to whatever dialogue box comes up. Color doesnt matter either, just make sure the dimentions are the same size as our video.
Ok, so we just turned our video to a solid color. Ooops. Dont worry, we will reverse this later. First off, if your footage isnt as long as the composition, clip the solid layer so that it is the length of the saber scene.
So now that we've done this, go ahead, right click the solid layer, and go Effects->Render->Beam
Ok, so now, we have our beam. First, change the color of the beam to the color you desire. Most importantly, UNCHECK composite on original. You should now see your beam sitting on top of your footage.
Ok. Slowly getting there. Now, configuring the beam. First of all, under length, set it to 100. For your starting and ending width, thats a matter of your footage. Start is the left one, end is the right one. I have to set my start to slightly higher to get the wider beam. So once you have that, you must now click the stop watches next to the Starting point and Ending point coordinates.
Once we've gotten this far, the boring part begins! Que up winamp and get something to drink. First, move your start and end points over the prop saber, like so:
What we can do now is, check the stopwatches next to Start width and End width, this way when the beam blurs, you can easily cover the whole thing.
Now you start rotocsoping. Once youve placed the start and end points where they should be, press PageDown to advance to the next frame and do the same exact thing.
Once youve done all your rotoscoping for each frame, DUPLICATE the beam layer we just made. Duplicate it about 2 times. (Edit-> Duplicate)
So hours later once your done with this, we need to add the final touch, the glow!. Right click the solid layer, and go Effects -> Blu & Sharpen -> Gaussian blur. Only do this for tracks 2 and 3. Set track 2 to a blur of about 25, and track 3 to about 15. Leave track 1 untouched. Your timeline should look similar:
Your output will look kind of like this:
Now this is ok yes. Actually you didnt even need to add the gaussian blur (depending on your preference) but picky me, I need it to look just alittle better.
Take your untouched layer (layer 1) and duplicate it yet again.
This step is going to make the beam thicker, and more definite.
On our duplicated layer, change the beam outter color to white. Shrink the thickness of the starting and end points, but not too much. Finally, click Transform and set the opacity to about 70%.
Thats it! Your sabers should look similar to this:
Pretty good eh?
Thanks to scott (the emperor) and Matt (Darth Vader) and Chris (whos house this was filmed at.
