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I'm wanting to make another lightsaber movie. The first one I made, The Battle of Harris Beach simply used an animated cylinder that was motion blurred, colored, and then overlayed on top of the footage as seen in this picture: Normal Method

This works great, but unfortunately, the new trailer has somewhat raised the bar, as seen at 1:57 in the new trailer. They not only glow, but appear to be flaming and have some sort of lightning travelling through them. What would be the best way of accomplishing this effect? Thanks.

Anson Savage
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    Perhaps related: http://blender.stackexchange.com/q/1875/599 – gandalf3 Nov 25 '15 at 07:23
  • Yeah, that looks related. Do you know of a good way to constrain the lightening to a pre animated cylinder in that case? – Anson Savage Nov 25 '15 at 15:49
  • @gandalf3 Is there a function that constrains the ends of one object to those of another? – Anson Savage Nov 25 '15 at 16:06
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    IIRC that addon has an option for constraining the lightning inside a container object. You could try generating all the lightning bolts inside a reference cylinder, then parenting a particle emitter to the animated cylinder. – gandalf3 Nov 25 '15 at 20:45
  • @gandalf3 Okay, I tried to figure out how the addon works. I installed it and opened the example file from the website, but it crashes every time I click on the Misc tab in the tool bar to get to the settings. – Anson Savage Nov 25 '15 at 21:13
  • Works for me.. Is there any error message in the console? – gandalf3 Nov 25 '15 at 21:44
  • @gandalf3 It said: "Writing: /tmp/FSLG_EXAMPLEv027.crash.txt" – Anson Savage Nov 25 '15 at 21:57
  • @gandalf3 Okay, I got it to work by importing objects from the example blend. Looks like this could be promising. How do I set up a material for the lightning? – Anson Savage Nov 25 '15 at 23:40
  • @gandalf3 Oh, it has to be wireframe. Okay, I'll keep experimenting. – Anson Savage Nov 25 '15 at 23:56
  • @gandalf3 Okay, I'm getting some decent results! Thanks for the ideas. I probably will just use it for when the lightsabers turn on or something. The lightning generator is a little too choppy compared to things like After Effect's automatic lightning maker. But, I very well might use it for some force lightning effects! – Anson Savage Nov 26 '15 at 01:40
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    btw, I just saw this posted on Blendernation, http://www.blendernation.com/2015/11/27/tutorial-blender-2-76-comprehensive-lightsabers-in-opengl/ – m.ardito Nov 27 '15 at 12:54
  • @m.ardito Cool! I'll look into it. – Anson Savage Nov 28 '15 at 01:14

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