lightsaber glow
 

does anybody have any tips on how to get a good light saber look. right now im stuck with this. it has too much green glow.

View my post in the episode III link:

http://forum.simplymaya.com/showthre...ght=lightsaber

There are various tut links in it on how to do it.

thx.. those are helpful. but does anybody know a way to do it in maya.

I tried the glow, couldn't get it much better then yours. The closer you get to your sabre the less the glow flares out, and the further back, the more the glow flares.Although if you set your Color and ambient to solid white, and incandesence ( of your color ) for your glow, you get a much better looking white core. Use the special effects tab for your glow intensity, but don't go too high on the inensity or you will loose your color. There is probably a way to do it and make the sabre look real and not so much like a photoshop effect.

thx. ill try switching around the ambient and incadense colors again and see wat i get. i use .2 for the glow.

bacically i have my colors right and stuff its just that i dont want to have as much glow radiating.

The special effects glow attribute doesn't seem to work well for Light sabre FX. There has got to be another way to get around it to achieve better control of the glow flare. I will have to experiment for a while and see if I can accomplish anything.

Maybe you should try creating a cylindrically mapped lightsaber with more glow on the tips than in the middle to create a more uniform glow.

Mapping the cylinder probably wont get any glow from the core. I have never been able to achieve that kind of glow from mapping. The somewhat proper glow Maya offers seems to be dependant on the effects tab. I wish the effects tab had more options.

why don't you do it in 2d.... maya glows suck ass... it's much easier in 2d :D (copy your image brighten it until your glow level is as you want it then blur it as much as you nee to to get the right amount of falloff, mix the original back on top... voila no re-rendering etc etc)

:ninja:
Alan

if i did it in 2d then i would have to edit every image of my animation. im sure the ppl that made star wars 3 had an easier way of animation a lightsaber than doing it on every frame

only if you're using photoshop (even then you could create a batch action!) doing it to every frame is what's required sometimes and if you rotoscope it as was mentioned on the other thread that's exactly what you'll be doing ;)

:ninja:

alan

Hmm -- just thought of something -- this would murder your render time but you could probably have the cylinder release particles, short lived and a LOT of them. This would also give a small trail when you swipe the saber aswell.

Not all that well versed with particles by Software Cloud might be a good setting for it.

Not to most effective, but it'll probably work.

guys one thing to remember is that ILM have prman and thus they can do multisegment motion blur where it blurs the image multiple times within a frame and that's partly how they get that "blown out" white look. I'll take a look at this tomorrow at work and see what i can come up with.

:ninja:

Alan

Ps the particles idea would be so hard to control accurately I think it would drive you into a quivering wreck of a maya artist in the corner ;)

so basically pure morning... wat ur saying is that i will more than likely be better off editing frame by frame?

Blah, I never once made the claim that he'd ever want to use Maya again after completing that clip -- just that it'd probably work :b

yes but that's what compsiting programs do!! you don;t manually do each frame (unless rotoscoping) you set it up for one frame and then run each frame through the process... don't worry I will explain tomorrow when I get time

Here's hoping he has access to After Effects

Your still rotoscoping in after effects, it's just a little easier to do it in after effects than in photoshop. I really want to know how ILM does it. Their saber art has a specific look to it than that of photoshop or after effects.

There's loads of tutorials around on the internet on this subject. Here two video tutorials from The Force.net. One is with After Effects, the other Photoshop.

http://www.theforce.net/fanfilms/pos...rtutorials.asp


Rotoscoping may take a long time, but remember: if you want good results, there no real easy way. You can bypass the hard work.

I know this is a stupid question but we are in the noob forum right? hehe

I've been trying to make a convincing metal and I was wondering how THX made the metal on his lightsaber blade

If THX can reply or anyone else thinks they know I'd appreciate it

JSand4325,
while i can't speak for THX there are many free shaders avaliable on the internet such as this site at highend3d:

http://www.highend3d.com/maya/shaders/

--
the simplest way to create metal in maya is to assign a phong E material to an object however to get a really realistic metal you often have to tamper with maya's default shaders so maybe downloading one would be the best method if your unfamiliar with maya's shading network capabilities
(its a jungle :headbang:)

hope that helps

JSand4325, I believe I used a Shiny Iron shader for the sabre hilt, and the shader is from highend3d.com. Wonderful site for Maya shaders. My render method for that sabre pic is from Mental Ray if your curious at all.

ok thankyou

I would like to learn a bit about Maya shader networks if anyone has the time to finish explaining how to do it with PhongE. I've learned a bit, and I owuld like to continue learning because shaders make the image in the end imo

Your welcome. As far as shader networks are concerned, I reccomend you do a google search. That might get you started. I have never messed with shader networks, so I cant really help you in that dept, unless someone here is willing to put in the time and effort. I also reccomend you know how to work the hypershade before you start adanced shading, if building your own shader is what your going for.

By the way, I thought Pure_Morning was going to explain the ILM methode of light sabre FX.