I just want you guys to know, this tutorial is really helpful. Please update with new techniques if you make any.
You got it. I might tonight, actually, considering I really effed up my sleep schedule. We’ll see. There were a few things I left out, like how to use Advanced lightning, some mesh warp things blah blah blah.
If you ever have any questions, please feel free to PM me and I’ll do what I can to help out!!
I personally animated the blue lightning frame by frame to make it as sporadic as possible. That was one of my main changes along with adding artificial light to the actors in post, like the first film.
I plan on building a light rig for my next fan film. I applaud you for having the patience to hand animate the blue lightning.
I finally uploaded that 10 second loopable stream onto megaupload.
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=VV63VASA
If you use it, list me in the credits (or whatever you had lol)
Hey Shades: do you have this file still available? We lost mega upload… boo to that!
I lost it somewhere, sadly. If people are nice I can possibly make a new one and upload that when I have some free time. Wouldn’t take me that long, as long as someone knows a reliable upload service that can handle relatively large files.
Well, I can make a stream but now the problems start when I want to add this to my video footage…total novice/nine and soon with after effects… not sure how to pin it to the nneutrons wand, get it to start’
/stop in the right place etc.
All you need to do is go frame by frame (or like I do, 3 or 4 frames at a time) and line it up. You’ll always want to look at your footage when making the streams (ie shoot first, add effects later) so you know how to make them look right. Then just make sure when making your stream, you keep your project settings the same as your base footage and then start the beam almost all the way at one side of the screen. That way, you’ll always have a good amount of overlap. If you’re talking more along the lines of a capture stream, just scale the solid you made your stream layer first, then line up your shots. If you have more specific questions, just shoot me a PM and I’ll be glad to help you out.