welcome to hit film 3 express you taking your first steps into a larger world in
this tutorial axle Wilkinson is going to be showing you how to create force
lightning effects to make sure you've downloaded the hit film 3 expressed
special edition which adds that effect for free
ok thanks
in this tutorial we will look at how easy it is to create force lightning in
hit film please download the project that accompanies the tutorial if you
want to follow along when you open the project you'll see that the lightsaber
is already created and include some masks so it is obscured by the costume
when needed
we have another tutorial that discusses how to create lights or defects if
you're interested but here we are going to focus on force lightning to control
the lightning will use multiple point leaders to set the positions of each end
of the arcs point layers are not visible in your finished video but service
placeholders for positioning effects we need one point position to represent the
target probably a Jedi and at the other end we will be using several points to
represent the six fingers in this project the points are already set up
for you I used hit films tracking tools to do this which are explained in their
own tutorial if you want to check that out we also touch on tracking more in
our lights or tutorial as with light sword it is best to set up lightning on
a separate layer from our footage we all use a plane which is just a flat layer
filled with a single color open the new layer menu and select plane make sure it
is set to black and named it lightning on the timeline we only want the
Lightning to be present in the end section where the point layers so to
change its duration drag the left edge of the plane layer until it lines up
with the end of the point leaders now select the effects panel hoping the
particles and simulation folder and drag the lightning and electricity effect
onto the plane in the control panel open the Layer Properties and set the blend
mode to add blend mode control the way the layer is mixed with layers below it
and add removed the black and works great for glowy late effects now in the
Lightning controls open the start and end sections and we can assign they use
later property to our points to define where the lightning will appear at the
start to our index point in the end to our target the start point value
controls the offset from our selected layer 0 that out so the effect aligned
right onto our
points now the arc is in place and it's just a matter of adjusting the
appearance this is somewhat to taste but I'll go through my adjustments to show
you what I've done and help you get familiar with the possibilities in the
main controls wave Scale defines the overall shape of the arc to keep things
a bit straighter reduce it to zero point to twitch Scale defines the smaller
variations along the arc reduced that 2.15 or so this helps make the scale of
the Lightning fit the scene in the start section set the wit to 1.5 in the end
section 25 this makes the boat's thicker as they approached the camera giving a
sense of perspective and making them more forceful as they advanced get it
force
under branches set the rotation to twenty degrees to keep the branches
reaching forward more set max scale 20 point eight to make them longer then add
one quick as well for the animation set the speed 20 point eight to two and the
scale 22 as well now we need to animate the creation of the lightning which we
will do using the growth property in the end controls moved to play head to the
frame where you want the Lightning the first appear and click the SHARE call
next to growth it turns blue which indicates that we have enabled key
framing for this property
keyframes record the adjustments we make to a property so it can change over time
set the growth value to 0 now advance five frames and set the value to 100
notice a new keyframe appears on the time line and the effect animates from
one setting to the other over the course of those five frames both the start and
end controls have growth properties so you can animate this sort of movement
from either end of the arc for coloring we want to be predominantly blue but the
specific shade is up to you for the course alektra blue that is almost white
then set the opacity all the way up to one point zero and the feather all the
way up to one as well in the glow pushed the color left to the edge of the color
wheel set opacity 20 points 6 radius 20 point eight eight and feather 21 now we
are going to use keyframes again to turn the arc on and off an easy way to do
this is to use the number of trunks so go to the first frame of the lightning
and enable key framing for the trucks then jumped forward the exact distance
is an important and set it to 0 jump forward again and send it back to 1 keep
the number of frames between the keyframes somewhat random with smaller
spaces have to keep him set to zero and continue switching from 120 until you
have about seven key frames ok that's pretty much it for our first lightning
arc now we need to duplicate it for the other three fingers we aren't doing the
thumb as its kind of pointed in the wrong direction NE
select the lightning and press Command de control de Young windows to duplicate
it until you have four copies in total now select each one and rename them to
represent the individual fingers press F two on Windows to rename the current
selection or return on Mac once the effects are renamed we can open the
Start controls for each one and assign them to the respective point layers as
you assign each one change the seed to a different number which randomized has
the shape of the arc this gives us four distinct parks shooting from his
fingertips remember the keyframes we created in the trunks property those
keyframes make all four copies turn on and off at the same time and we want to
mix that up a bit on the trucks property for each of the three new arcs drag the
keyframes to different locations we want all the arts to flash on and off but we
want at least one are to be visible at all times
preferably to feel free to occasionally delete aqui for Mr to as well if you'd
like
repeat this for each whitening effect ok with all of the arcs animated the effect
itself is basically done but we are not we're going to make this even better
first let's make the Lightning more intense by adding the glow effect in the
effects panel type glow into the search box then drag it onto our lightning
later in the control panel since the glow comes last
it impacts all of the lightning effects that come before it in the globe
controls grazing intensity will make this effect more powerful than you can
possibly imagine
well maybe not but the intensity to 1.5 then raised the radius 270 and that does
make the Lightning feel more powerful right to make the entire effect feel
more frenetic and chaotic find the motion blur effect in the effects panel
and drag it onto your lightning later this kind of breaks the lightening up
especially when it's moving quickly and makes it feel a bit more aggressive this
is largely a stylistic choice and you can leave it off if you prefer but I
rather like the results it gives because we created the Lightning on a plane
rather than adding it directly to our video later we can use effects to alter
the parents without affecting the video underneath the last thing to do is
composite this into the scene a bit better this lightning would brighten the
surrounding significantly so we want to simulate that to do so select the
Lightning layer and duplicated this duplicate the entire layer complete with
each of the lightning effects that we created on the lower copy select and
delete the motion blur and replace it with an ordinary blur effects panel
we're going to blur the Panther Pudu out of this layer and brighten it up a bit
so it brightens the background around the Lightning said the blue radius 250
then had a crush blacks and whites effect and crush the white 20 points or
whatever makes you happy if that fails to blue we can add a hue saturation and
lightness effect and reduce the master saturation to around minus fifty what's
right click and rename this layer and call it
illumination toggle the glow effect for this layer on and off to decide whether
you want to keep it I think I'm going to deleted in that finishes off the scene
if it doesn't play back smoothly on your computer with this many effects added
this round button with the play icon lets you generate a ram preview set to
play head before the effects start the preview and let it render when it is
done
move the play head back and click play to play through it hopefully you have
achieved a result that you are happy with but if you have another idea about
how to approach it or just think it would look better with different
settings now you know where to find those settings and how to adjust I'm
actually Wilkinson for him dot com and thank you very much for watching the
force be with you
if you haven't watched it yet make sure you complete your training with a
lightsaber