rotoscope

Making Lightsabers
in your movies

Lightsabers are one of the best special effects I've ever seen in my life. And now, I can finally put them in my movies. The best thing about it is how easy it is to make them!
The way Lucas's editing guys used to do it was with a technique called rotoscoping, which means to literally paint over each frame with a computer. The way we're going to do it is very similar, but a bit easier.

What you need-
Paintshop Pro 6 or higher (5.0 might work, but I'm not sure)

Lighstaber Prop

Digital Movie Camera

Editing Software

Alot of people use Adobe Photoshop to do this instead of Paint Shop Pro, but I have Paint Shop Pro so I'm explaining how to do it with that. If you don't have one of those, you're sadly wasting your time. Sorry to get your hopes up. But if you do, !SCROLL DOWN!!

Step 1: Making your jedi weapon

All jedi have to go through years of training before they can have their own lightsaber, but hey, this is a long time later in a galaxy right here. Let's skip the training!
Literally ANYTHING works for a lightsaber. I haven't made mine yet, but you can build it with just about anything. The main things you need are the handle and the pole, which you will be ROTOSCOPING later. The pole can be anything you can fight with, and the handle just has to be strong enough to put the pole into. The handle should be no wider than a relay baton and no thinner than a quarter. The pole should be rather thin- you don't want to see it in your finished product. The wider the poll, the fatter and uglier the glowing blade will have to be if you want to cover up the poll completely. Along the lines of a broomstick. Most blades are about 4 feet long or so. (I don't know for sure, but I see alot of longer ones. Think about big swords.) Make sure you have all of that and scroll down.

Step 2: Filming Fake

Now that you have your fake saber built, you obviously have to film someone using it. The longer your movie is, the longer and more painful it will be to rotoscope it later, so don't go too long. Believe me- you'll be sorry, but you'll love the finished product no matter what. Here is where choreography and camera skills are very important. You don't want it to look too fake, but you don't want to try and look really good and keep screwing up. And a shaky camera really ruins the movie. Use a tripod or a steady surface- a box, car, ground, your lap, a desk, or anything you can think of. Make sure you get different camera angles and keep switching often, because it makes your movie much more interesting. One single shot for a few minutes is really boring. Anyways, there are tons of sites with links for choreography and stuff like that. I have links at the bottom of the page.

Step 3: Rotoscoping Time!

Bear with me on this part- it's a long and grueling process, but once you're done, you feel very very happy.
It also won't take you as long once you get used to doing it.

Assuming you have a recent version of Jasc Paint Shop Pro, and you have something to edit, let's begin!!

First off you have to capture all of your film to computer and all that junk, and editing software may vary, so you're your own with that. These are just the things you do to each image of your movie.

Rotoscoping with Paint Shop Pro 6 or better
By Sam

1. Making the core
First things first. Select the draw tool and open the tool options for it. Make sure that the two pull-down menus are on Single Line, and Stroked. Also make sure that the only boxes checked are Antialias and Create as Vector. Adjust the width to what you want, (too wide looks fat and unprofessional, while too thin makes it look weak and skinny.) The width of your lightsaber depends on how far away or close it is. In real life, a realistic lightsaber blade should be about as wide as a bottle cap- (I know that�s kind of confusing, but I can�t think of a better reference.) Just keep in mind that a pop can is way too fat.
Now, to start the first fun part. Sort of. Make sure white is one of the colors on the color palette. Start at the lightsaber handle, right where the blade should be, now left-click or right-click, depending on which side of the palette the white is in, and drag the cursor to the top of your lightsaber. (Release the mouse) Now the white line should replace all of the old rod or whatever you used when filming. Ok. Now for the confusing part. Bear with me.

2. Messing with layers
Open the layers palette by right clicking anywhere on any of the other toolbars and selecting layers palette. Good job. Now, you should see layer 1 and background. Those are the first two layers that you just made. Go to the blending to the right of layer 1, and change it from normal to lighten. Next, right click on layer 1, and select duplicate. Now there should also be a layer called Copy of Layer 1. Right click on layer 1 again, (that�s the one you just clicked on) and select Convert to Raster. Now, look at Copy of Layer 1. To the left, there should be a small plus sign. Left-click on it, and watch as it magically turns to a minus sign and a thing called Line appears. Now right-click on Line and select properties.

3. Making the glowing color
Obviously, no lightsaber looks good without color. After making the important decision of which color the blade should be, follow these steps. You should be in the properties for the Line thing. Left click the color square (the white one). Pick the color. It should be bright- cartoonish. (I know that�s not a word) Good job getting this far. Now click OK and get out of that window. (Don�t get all scared when you don�t see the color yet. I�ll explain later.)



     4. More layer stuff
Go back to the layer palette and right-click on Copy of layer 1. Select Convert to raster. Good job. You�re almost done. Now right-click on it again, and select duplicate. Now you should see Copy of Copy of layer 1. Right-click on it and select duplicate again. Now you should see Copy of Copy of Copy of layer 1. Pheww. Confusing. Now for the home stretch.

     5. Finishing up
Now it�s time to do the magic part. Don�t worry, once you get used to doing this, it won�t seem like magic anymore. Here we go. Go to your first copy layer. (Copy of Layer 1) Left Click on it so that it�s highlighted. Now Go to the top of the screen, and select Image, then Blur, then Gaussian Blur. A small window should pop up. Change the radius to 10. Then Click Ok and watch the color come out of hiding. You�re not finished yet. Now Left click on The next layer up. (Copy of Copy of Layer 1) Do the same thing, only this time, set the radius at 20. After that, go to the top layer. (Copy of Copy of Copy of Layer 1) This time set the radius to 30. YOU�RE ALMOST THERE! Not for the last and final step. Your core (the white part) should be kind of sharp and edgy, so go to layer 1 and do the Gaussian Blur for it. But for this one, don�t set the radius any higher than 2. It sort of depends again on how far away the lightsaber is. I usually do 1, but sometimes it isn�t enough. It�s up to you. Last but not least, get rid of all those stupid confusing layers. To do this, go to layers, on the menu bar along with Image, File, Edit, etc. Go to Layers, then Merge, then Merge All (Flatten).

   Now is the happy part where you give a sigh of relief and then jump up and start cheering until you have a heart attack. If you don�t have a heart attack, try not to have one when you realize that you have to do this entire process for EVERY SINGLE FRAME of your film. (Assuming this is a movie, if not, you only have to do it with every picture you want to edit.) But once you get used to it, it doesn�t take that much time per frame. I can do it in about a minute now, but when you think about it, that�s a half-hour for thirty frames-- only about 6 or seven seconds of footage!!!!!!!!!!!!
Well, I�m glad I could share this tiny knowledge with you. It�s been fun. This effect really does make your movie AWESOME. No one can argue with plastic toy versus glowing, searing jedi weapon.

The reason the handle is so wierd is because I quickly painted over it. If it was one that I built, it would look much better. (I was actually holding one of the plastic blue golf clubs. That's why the blade is a little too fat. You can still kinda see the blue shaft behind the blade.