Welcome back to another tutorial everyone.
Things are getting busy as we prepare to go to VidCon, but that's not going to stop us
from releasing this video, which is all about creating lightsaber clashes.
Now we have done tutorials on creating and animating lightsabers in the past, and those
tutorials are still relevant.
Today we'll be focusing on the clashes themselves- how to make them energetic and add smoke,
sparks, and flares.
We'll be using stock footage for this effect, but that doesn't mean you can't film something
yourself.
Let's go ahead and get started.
Here I am in my main composite shot in HitFilm.
I've already animated the lightsabers onto my stock footage.
I used the 4 Point Lightsword Ultra effect on separate Planes.
So the lightsabers are there, but nothing else.
The first thing I want to do is know when and where they're making contact.
I'll create a new Point for that.
Drop down the controls for this Point and activate keyframes for the Position property.
Now go through the scene and each time the lightsabers are supposed to clash, move the
Point to where they make contact.
If they're touching for more than one frame, move the Point to be more accurate.
Don't worry about the Position in between clashes- only focus on when they touch.
When you're done, highlight all of the keyframes and set them to the Constant type.
This removes the Interpolation and makes it easier to see when the contact is actually
taking place.
Now that we have the position and timing of the clashes, it's time to build a lens flare.
Luckily, I covered how to do this in a tutorial released just a few weeks ago.
The difference with this flare is that the Intensity is going to be keyframed to raise
up and down throughout the scene.
To avoid having to do this for multiple flare effects, I recommend you keyframe the Intensity
of one flare piece and get it working how you like.
Then, duplicate it and build the rest of the flare from that one piece.
Here is a quick breakdown of the flare I used: the Diffraction Chromatic type is the main
hotspot and rays.
A blue Digital Stripe adds the anamorphic look.
Then there's a Digital Blocks flare to make it a stronger blue color and create more artifacts.
A chromatic arc adds a rainbow flare to the side of the screen, and I finished it all
off with a Gleam effect.
Now for the sparks we're going to be using the particle simulator.
This effect is in HitFilm Pro by default, or for Express you'll need the 3D: Particles
pack.
There is a Sparks effect in base Express that would work pretty well if you take the time
to customize it.
When it comes to particles, I like to keep things in separate composites if I can.
This allows me to make proxies and speed up my workflow.
Let's create a new comp and call it Sparks.
I'll drag in my footage- we'll hide this for now so that it doesn't show up, but later
I'll need to see when the lightsabers make contact.
Add the Particle Simulator effect to the timeline.
The first thing I want to do is make sure that this is a burst of sparks, instead of
a continuous flow.
In the Controls panel, search for "per second".
The property we want is this first one- particles per second.
Set the number to something high like 3000 and activate keyframes.
Skip one frame forward and set it to 0.
This results in a quick burst of particles which then stops.
They're coming out way too slow, so let's search for Speed.
Set that to above 1000.
The particles are currently emitting in a sphere-like formation.
In the Emitter properties set the Trajectory to Cone.
Take a look at your footage and see which way the particles should be moving.
For this first hit, I want them to go down and to the right, to follow the movement of
the swing.
Use the Rotation controls to align it properly.
They're lasting too long, so search for Life and set that to below .5 seconds.
Scale is next- I'll set that to around 10%.
Align the particle layer to start when the clash happens onscreen.
Use the position handles to place it in the right spot.
These particles are too uniform; they're all the same size, speed, and they disappear at
the same time.
Search for Variation in the bar up top.
In Movement Variation, set the Life to .3.
Because our original Life value was set to .4, this means that particles can die as early
as .1 seconds or as late at .7.
Set the Scale variation to 3 or 4 percent, and raise the Speed to around 500.
Now we're going to add a Force.
Click the plus icon to the right of that category to begin.
Drop down the settings and change the type to Turbulence.
Turn the Smooth and Strength to your liking.
This makes the particles fly randomly after their initial ejection.
Once you get the settings right, the next step is to copy and paste this particle simulation
for each contact point.
I'll show how to do the second one, but then skip ahead to the finished result.
Duplicate the particle layer.
Move your timeline ahead to the next clash and start the new layer there.
Search for Seed and choose a different number so that the simulation isn't exactly the same.
Now, if needed, change the Trajectory to follow the motion.
For this one I'll also increase the Radius to make them more spread out.
Change any of the previous properties if needed to fit the clip.
Repeat these steps as many times as you need to finish the rest of the scene.
Highlight all of the layers and turn on motion blur.
When you're done making changes, right-click the Sparks comp in the Media panel and select
Make Proxy.
Back in the main comp, drag in the Sparks composite to the timeline.
Drop on both the Fill Color and Glow effects.
In the Fill settings I'll select an orange red color.
In the Glow dropdown, change the Blend to Add, and lower the Radius.
You can raise the Intensity if your sparks aren't visible enough.
Adjust the Per Channel Intensity controls to change the color of the Glow.
Next up is the smoke the appears along with the sparks.
Again, I'm going to make a separate composite, but this time I'll be using stock footage
from ActionVFX.com.
The reason is because smoke is more difficult to simulate with particles.
This doesn't mean it can't be done in HitFilm, but since we have real, high-quality practical
effects, we're going to use them.
All of these elements come from the Bullet Hits collection.
Because the smoke footage tends to last longer than the sparks, we'll have to motion track
the shot.
Click the card onscreen to watch Axel's tutorial on that if you haven't already.
For this shot it was tricky to find a distinct object that was present the whole time.
I ended up tracking this fold in the curtain near the floor.
There are several moments where the actors go in front of it, and so I had to manually
keyframe the tracking point after applying the data to it.
Let's start with this front bullet hit footage.
I'll move ahead in the timeline to where I want this to happen, and put the start of
the layer there.
Right click and set the Blend to Screen.
It's a little bit too big, so decrease the Scale in the Controls panel and adjust the
Position to put it in the right place.
Parent this layer to the motion tracked point.
I'm going to make the burst happen faster by right-clicking the layer and selecting
Speed/Duration.
I'll set it to 200%- twice as fast.
Now to better match the color of the smoke to the lightsabers, add a Color Gradient effect
directly to this layer.
By default, the colors will be black and white.
And because the layer is set to Screen, the black will be transparent, and the white will
show up more.
Move the control points to be closer together on each edge of the smoke.
Let's change the colors to match the lightsabers.
In the Controls panel I'll make the left side purple and the right side blue.
Now change the Blend to make the color overlay on the stock footage.
For this scene, there are a few that work well: Multiply, Overlay, and Softlight.
Choose which one works best for your clip.
To make the color stronger or less visible, adjust the Opacity.
Let's add some more motion with a Waves effect.
I'll raise the Amplitude to 30 or 40.
Then for Phase Speed, raise that to around 1 to start the animation.
If you want the waves to be closer together, increase the Frequency.
This is a simple effect, but it helps add the appearance of wind generated by our actors
moving around.
Even though we sped up the smoke clip, it still should disappear after a few frames.
Our actors are moving and swinging around and this would cause any smoke to be blown
away pretty quickly.
So I'll come into the Transform properties and keyframe the Opacity to go to 0 over the
next second or two.
So, like the sparks, the next step is to just add a new smoke effect for each clash.
I would not recommend using the same smoke effect throughout the scene.
When you drop a new one in you can copy the original, right-click the new layer and select
Paste Attributes.
This will copy the Color Gradient, Waves, and Position data onto the new stock effect.
It won't copy the change in Speed, so you do have to do that for each new layer.
Repeat this whole process for the smoke for each clash in your scene.
Feel free to leave any comments or questions down below.
Don't forget to subscribe and hit the bell icon, and until next time, thanks for watching.