Tutorial: Handling objects in front of lightsabers VERY FAST

[silva22ful]

where i found the vector paint in the after effects cs5?

[phantombest1220]

@silva22ful sadly there isn't vector paint in cs5

[Surakemastura]

Awesome tutorial, but can you please explain what happens at 1:48? How do you turn the opacity of the lightsaber to 100% again, without the black brushes re-appearing?

[PeGeProd]

I set the opacity back to 100%, that's it. The brushes won't appear black in the first place because your lightsaber blade should be set to the "Screen" transfer mode anyway, which means that black spots won't show but simply disappear.

You can only see the black strokes while you're actually drawing them. You can see in this tutorial that the instant I'm done with drawing a stroke and release the mousebutton, the black stroke disappears.

[mageXtreme]

i use a Alpha-matte 'inverted' mask to do this...

[bouchandre]

the paint and vector paint is not in cs5 :(

[PeGeProd]

Really?? What a shame!!

However, if you happen to have an older version of After Effects around (like CS4), maybe you can copy the VectorPaint.aex file from the effects folder to the plug-ins folder of your new version. It should work, I guess, but haven't tried it since our college won't get CS5 before fall.

[FilmIdentity]

where did you get that clip? can you send me a link?

[RikuDeepDive]

dude that is amazing, this whole time i have been doing masking to take out the obscurities and yeah it takes forever. thank you so much for sharing this.

[PeGeProd]

Now you know what I felt like when I found out ;-)

However, you're perfectly welcome.

[RikuDeepDive]

@PeGeProd i did run into a problem though, sometimes when im doing this, my after effects stops responding. not sure why, but it does.

[PeGeProd]

Oh yeah, the freezing problem. Not sure why it happens, but I've encountered it several times as well. First way to solve the problem is avoiding it in drawing short, small strokes instead of long ones. Make sure to draw several short strokes and you're pretty much on the save side.

Also, going to Preferences > Media & Disk Cache and setting the Maximum Disk Cache Size from 2000 to 8000 MB helped me... for a while, at least.

[RikuDeepDive]

@PeGeProd ah a noobie mistake on my part. i forgot that when you do larger strokes it takes a bit to apply it to the comp. thanks again :)

[MikeStechProductions]

thanks

[MikeStechProductions]

and the vector paint stays on that one frame?

[PeGeProd]

Sure.

[MikeStechProductions]

thats awesome

[JedielDaniel]

Thank You man! Your method really make this easy. Masking out those objects was really painful. I'm totaly greatful!

[paramoredream]

I haven`t test your method yet, but I`m sure it`s much more faster! Thanx)

I really need it in my movie

[000DeathKnight000]

Thank you so much for this tutorial ! ^.^

you made my life easier

[SilentBat]

Great video man.

[PeGeProd]

Thank you!

[RobinGoehner]

where did you get the footage?. please send it to me :)

[PeGeProd]

It's from the bonus dvd of Episode III. I don't wanna send it around though.. I am glad that I'm getting away with using copyrighted material for my tutorials (due to the terms of Fair Use) and I don't want to push my luck in this case.

Feel free to send me a private message so we can further discuss this matter .

[RobinGoehner]

ahh okay :)..

I understand that...

I just wanted to try out rotoscoping it..

but okay ... thank you :)...

Robin

[barfsonyou99]

Where did you get the raw footage of episode 3?

[HrtPndingPrduction]

This works much better, but every time I do the painting, After Effects freezes on me.

[PeGeProd]

Well, it's an effect that costs much power. Maybe you should only do little, short strokes instead of longer ones. AE crashed on me as well when I drew too long strokes.

[PeGeProd]

Hey there, little update on that crashing problem. I solved it in going to Edit > Preferences > Media & Disk Cache... and enabling Disk Cache. I set the maximum size to 2000 MB and since I activated this option, that effect has never freezed After Effects on me again.

[HrtPndingPrduction]

wow, can you make a tut. on how to do the lightsaber contact flashes please

thanks.

[PeGeProd]

You just need a decent contact flash image (I can share mine if you want) and you mak that appear when the lightsabers clash and fade away within the following five or six frames.

[safire333]

NICE!!! so much faster!! where did u get the raw footage from btw??? plz respond...

[VaportrailFilms]

Ugh, that's so obvious now. I do that in photoshop all the time.

Good call, man.

[Xawer23]

good work, thx

but this is not "very fast", its just as fast so that everyone can understand what you are doing. great!

[fjrsm]

Nice method. By the way, I love the related videos =P

Probably the "obscurity" word helps a little =P

[sasukebg]

nice

[kuunami]

That's EXACTLY how I do it. I thought I was the only person who uses the vector pain method. LOL. Except that I use the eraser tool in vector paint instead of painting black, but it's the same thing.