Hi all,

Hope all your holidays have been wonderful. 

I'm shooting a 60 second spot and need to create a lightning effect keyed over people being affected by static electricity.  I've found some animated GIF's of lightning that might work, but I was wondering whether someone might have a better idea.  Are their effects out there that would work better?  Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Ross

If you're looking to have sparks flying to/from the subjects, then these really have to be custom animated. One thing in Liquid that may help the effect is Dream Glow. If you film your subjects on a green screen and then apply a green screen filter and the Dream Glow effect, you can surround your subjects with a glowing nimbus (which can be keyframed). It's not exactly authentic physics, but a subtle effect may enhance the overall look.

At one point, I'd found a lighting generator online. It was a while ago, and I don't seem to have saved it anywhere I can easily lay hands on it. If you do a search for something like "video lightning generator" you may find it or something like it. If you have Blender (and you should as it's free), then there's a tutorial on lightning at http://www.selleri.org/Blender/tuts/Lightnings.pdf that you can use (this assumes you know a lot about Blender, so if you don't then it will be a challenge to make it work). If you have Adobe After Effects, it has a lightning generator built in.

Hope this helps. 

Blender is a 3d animation program. I have downloaded it but haven't had the time to learn. You can watch some videos o youtube, just do a search on blender. It truely is a great program and its free.

There is an older very slow titling package from Ulead, now Corel called Cool3D Production Studio.  It has some very nice lightning effects that can be imported into Liquid with Alpha Channels which you can size and place on your timeline.  The original cost was about $100.00 US, but you may be able to find a copy on ebay.

Denny

After Effects will probably offer you the most control with this type of effect, but AE is expensive and can numb the mind while you try to master it, although Lightning is a fairly basic AE keyframe task.

A bit cheaper is FXHome, which offers a number of preset lightning effects:

http://fxhome.com/presets/category/27/lightning

I haven't tried an XSend from Liquid to FX Home, but Fuse would probably do it if that doesn't work. There is also a demo of FX home on their home page, so probably best to try before you buy.

If you have photoshop, you can try to create a single frame of lightining, see here for a tutorial on creating it: http://www.techeblog.com/index.php/tech-gadget/how-to-create-lightning-effects-in-photoshop

But I would try just creating one frame first just to see if you can screen that in. FX Home or AE or Blender are probably a better bet.

Paul

SussexJohn:

What, may I ask, does Blender do?

Anything you want it to.

From the Blender WIKI:

Blender is a free software 3D animation program. It can be used for modeling, UV unwrapping, texturing, rigging, skinning, animating, rendering, particle and other simulating, non-linear editing, compositing, and creating interactive 3D applications.

So, it's free, but it might be a little bit more than you need just to create lightining effects. But if you are into 3D animation, it does have a thriving community to help you out if you get stuck.

Try this - http://www.falgor.net/tutorials/lightning/ but be warned, it's not for the faint hearted!

Paul

Not quite sure what you mean. Is it something similar to this?

(I know it isn't great, it's just an illustrations)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQPU_G7I3hM

Karel.

Paul

It's really great to know you are still around.!!! it makes us old timers know the party is not over. I wish the other Paul would show up every now and then. I'm looking forward to your Next Gen book.

Mike,

Your address brings back fond memories.  In my corporate days, I provided A/V support for a sales conference at the Ritz Carlton and had of the best afternoons of my life body surfing in the water at Dana Point Beach.

Ross

Ross

I'm down in the Dana Point Harbor Marina, this is truly a wonderful area.

Mike

I can't say that I have tried this, but from other work, I have pulled down some spectacular footage on lightning across a completely dark sky.  What about using one of those, and apply a luma key to make the dark sky transparent?  Follow this up with the dream glow that Dave Stone mentioned.  It might just work.

After Effects can do it, but Paul Ekert is correct--learning it is mind numbing.  How about a book on it Paul?  Can I get my Liquid Edition 6 book autographed?