Well, the video quality of this clip makes it very difficult to rate. The lightsaber itself isn't bad, although I personally would go for a brighter, wider glow with high-saturation edges on the blade. I noticed this clip is set to loop forwards and backwards. It wouldn't be terribly noticeable except that the blade bends; when it plays backwards, it bends in the direction of its movement, which would make no sense. Never make a lightsaber bend. Use the Clone Stamp or Healing Brush tools to get rid of the bent part of the original saber, and create your own lightsaber straight. Real lightsabers would not bend.
Good job, though. Keep up the good work, and welcome, once again. _________________ Interested in showcasing your special effects or learning some new ones from the masters? Check out PSFX!
Posted: Tue Aug 16, 2005 9:36 am Post subject: Glowing Reflections
OK, I have the idea of the blades. I was wondering how to create the sabre's light to reflect back onto the person holding the sabre. This might be a really simple question (though my lack of knowlegde is my weakness here). I did try to create a new layer of just the parts of closest to the saber hilt/blade. Then playing with different blending options, did try to create appearance of the glow reflecting back. If someone could shed some "light" on this, it would be greatly appreciated.
Gracias, JB _________________ Don't Mess with the Hair! - Johnny Bravo
That's a difficult effect to achieve in video; for video, you basically have to have a real light source illuminating the actor appropriately. But for still images, you can sort of fake it.
First of all, don't overdo it. It's far more effective to add a few colored highlights than to smother the actor in colored glow. I'd create two black layers above the background layer, setting the lower one to Screen or Linear Dodge and the upper one to Color Dodge. Then I'd carefully brush in little bits of highlights on surfaces that would probably reflect the light back. You have to think three-dimensionally, and understand the way the light bounces off of materials. It'll take a lot of tweaking to get it to look right, and it's only practical for still pictures. _________________ Interested in showcasing your special effects or learning some new ones from the masters? Check out PSFX!
Another thing: if you want to look at some AWESOME examples of digitally painted lighting, check out "The Art of Star Wars: Episode III." Most of the paintings in the book were done using Wacom tablets and Painter or Photoshop. There's some great highlight stuff in there you can use for reference. _________________ Interested in showcasing your special effects or learning some new ones from the masters? Check out PSFX!
in that last video that was posted, it looks like the saber has a 20-degree bend in it. true, the original shows a bend too, but it's gradual, not a perfect angle. _________________ brush your hair and comb your teeth
Yup, that's what I was talking about. No bendie sabers! _________________ Interested in showcasing your special effects or learning some new ones from the masters? Check out PSFX!
My friends and I goofing around. BTW, I didn't use your tutorial, Data. I did one 0.7 Gaussian blur, duplicated, then I used 2 separate outer glow layers per blade. The lighter thinner glow is Blend Mode linear light, spread 5, size 9, and fiddled with the Opacity (I coulda set this a tad higher with less glow, meh). Found it very close to your tutorial final product.[/img]
Joined: 08 Jun 2005
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Posted: Fri Sep 09, 2005 10:36 am Post subject:
Wow, another method, compared to datameisters thats amazingly simple, and the effects arent exactly bad, but i think datameisters are just that little bit better, very good technique though, very simple! _________________ www.jerseyhacker.co.uk
Yup, not bad at all! I've already stated my gripe about undersaturated blade edges, so I won't bore you all with it again. One thing I'd recommend, eddiewan--be careful with the blue lightsaber's color. Most people either go too purplish or too cyanish when creating blue lightsabers. The perfect color sits right in the bluish-cyan range--the Hue value is about 215. But that's all subjective; whatever color you like. Keep up the good work!
My technique actually goes by very quickly once you've done it a few times. It just looks like a lot of steps. _________________ Interested in showcasing your special effects or learning some new ones from the masters? Check out PSFX!
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One thing I'd recommend, eddiewan--be careful with the blue lightsaber's color. Most people either go too purplish or too cyanish when creating blue lightsabers. The perfect color sits right in the bluish-cyan range--the Hue value is 
