HitFilm provides the most efficient and high quality tools for creating lightsword effects, reducing the rotoscoping requirements and automating key visual elements such as the motion blur trails.
Lightsword (2-Point Auto) provides a rapid method requiring the placing of two points in the frame, one at the hilt and one at the tip of the prop blade. Once these points are rotoscoped to the movement of the lightsword blade, HitFilm will automatically calculate the appropriate motion blur based on the speed at which the blade is moving, and the path interpolation settings you choose.
Hilt
- Position Menu: The hilt position can be linked to another layer via the Position menu. Use the menu to select any other layer on your timeline, to apply the selected layer’s position to the Hilt point. When a layer is selected, the Position values below serve as an offset from the selected layer’s position.
- Position: The hilt position can be manually specified, using X (horizontal) and Y (vertical) values. When a layer is selected, these Position values serve as an offset from the selected layer’s position.
- Width: Sets the width of the lightsaber core at the hilt. The width of the hilt and tip can be set separately, which is useful for creating perspective on the blade or creating tapered shapes.
Tip
- Position Menu: The tip position can be linked to another layer via the Position menu. Use the menu to select any other layer on your timeline, to apply the selected layer’s position to the Hilt point. When a layer is selected, the Position values below serve as an offset from the selected layer’s position.
- Position: The tip position can be manually specified, using X (horizontal) and Y (vertical) values. When a layer is selected, these Position values serve as an offset from the selected layer’s position.
- Width: Sets the width of the lightsaber core at the tip. The width of the hilt and tip can be set separately, which is useful for creating perspective on the blade or creating tapered shapes.
Extension
- Extension: Sets the length of the blade, as a percentage of the distance from the hilt to the tip. The lightsword extension can be keyframed to create the ‘ignition’ animation, whereby the lightsword blade extends out of the hilt, or contracts back in.
Core
The core is the central part of the effect which directly covers the prop blade.
- Width: The Width of the core can be adjusted, as a percentage of the width values set in the Tip and Hilt controls above. This control allows you to adjust the overall width with a single control, while retaining any taper created by the separate width values used in the hilt and tip controls.
- Color: Choose a color for the core. The core Color should generally be set sightly off white, in the direction of the color that will be used for the glow. You can use the eyedropper to choose a color from the layer, or click the swatch to open a color picker and choose any color you prefer. You can also manually enter the color values for the red, green, and blue channels.
- Feather: Adjusts the softness of the core’s edges.
- Stability: Lowering the Stability causes the core shape to fluctuate in size, making the blade appear unstable.
- Mask: Control whether masks applied to the layer affect the glow.
- Disable: Allows the glow to naturally wrap around the mask edges, for a softer result. This option is best when the object being masked is very near the lightsword blade
- Enable: Cuts the glow off exactly at the edge of the mask. Masks should generally be enabled when there is a significant distance between the object being masked and the lightsword blade.
- Invert: Reveals the glow outside the mask, while removing it inside.
Inner Glow
Two glows are built-in to the effect. Varying the width of the inner and outer glows allows you to layer the glow and create a more natural falloff around the edges of the effect. The inner glow is controlled here, and the outer glow controls are found below.
- Width: Adjusts the overall width of the inner glow, in pixels.
- Color: Choose a color for the inner glow. The inner glow color should generally be set to a bright, highly saturated color. You can use the eyedropper to choose a color from the layer, or click the swatch to open a color picker and choose any color you prefer. You can also manually enter the color values for the red, green, and blue channels.
- Alpha: Adjusts the opacity of the inner glow.
- Stability: Lowering the stability causes the inner glow to fluctuate in size, making the blade appear unstable.
- Flicker: Sets the intensity of the flicker applied to the glow’s brightness. This does not alter the shape of the glow.
Outer Glow
Two glows are built-in to the effect. Varying the width of the inner and outer glows allows you to layer the glow and create a more natural falloff around the edges of the effect. The outer glow is controlled here, and the inner glow controls are found above.
- Width: Adjusts the overall width of the inner glow, in pixels.
- Color: Choose a color for the inner glow. The outer glow color can be set to a similar color to the inner glow color, for a traditional look, or to an entirely different color to create a gradient in the glow. You can use the eyedropper to choose a color from the layer, or click the swatch to open a color picker and choose any color you prefer. You can also manually enter the color values for the red, green, and blue channels.
- Alpha: Adjusts the opacity of the inner glow.
Path interpolation
During rapid movement motion blur should cause the hilt and tip to fan out, creating a motion trail. Path interpolation is used to create a natural curve along the hilt and tip ends.
- Scale: Reducing the scale to zero will remove all path interpolation, resulting in straight lines drawn at the hilt and tip ends of the blade. Increasing the scale will create path interpolation and curve the ends.
- Hilt: When the blade is swinging toward or away from the camera, you can adjust the Hilt angle to correspond to the movement of the prop’s hilt, and get accurate motion simulation.
- Tip: When the blade is swinging toward or away from the camera, you can adjust the Tip angle to correspond to the movement of the prop’s tip, and get accurate motion simulation.
- Motion Persistence: HitFilm automatically attempts to create a natural trail shape based on the movement of the hilt and tip points, based on the expected behavior of a blade in motion. The duration of the trail is determined by the motion persistence. Increasing the value will cause the trail to remain visible for more frames, thus creating a larger trail. Reducing the value will create a smaller trail.
- Note that motion persistence is restricted by the Auto Scale Persistence properties, if Auto Scale is activated (see below).
- Persistence Shift: Shifts the position of the motion blur in relation to the exact hilt and tip locations. This adjusts the trail to be either in front (1.0), behind (0.0) or in the middle (0.5) of the control point positions. At the default of 0.0 this means that on frames containing fast moving blades you should position the control points on the leading edges of the blade.
Auto Scale Persistence
Auto Scale provides additional control over the generation of the persistence trail, determining when the trail is generated. These settings can be used to match the trail to the natural motion blur found in your footage, which may vary depending on your camera settings.
- Auto Scale: Choose how the scale persistence is calculated.
- Enable: Uses the thresholds below to calculate the motion persistence.
- Disable: Uses only the Motion Persistence property. Therefore the trail will always be generated even during small movements. A high Motion Persistence value combined with Auto Scale turned off will create a long, unnatural trail. Increasing the motion persistence over 180 can create extreme streaking. This isn’t suitable for lightsabers but can be an interesting effect in its own right.
- Speed Threshold: Used to restrict the activation of motion persistence. Below the specified threshold, the lightsword shape will be drawn without any trail. This ensures that the blade does not look indistinct when it is moving slowly. As soon as the speed threshold is exceeded, the trail will be generated according to the motion persistence setting.
- Swing Threshold: Used to restrict the activation of motion persistence. Below the specified threshold, the lightsword shape will be drawn without any trail. This ensures that the blade does not look indistinct when it is moving slowly. As soon as the swing threshold is exceeded, the trail will be generated according to the motion persistence setting.
- Minimum Persistence: Determines how much motion trail is generated on frames where the speed and swing thresholds are not met. Setting this to 0.0 ensures the blade shape is defined solely by the core, hilt and tip properties. Raising the value will generate a blur trail even during minor movements.
Distortion
Distortion not only alters the edges of the core, to make them more irregular, but distorts the background layer where it is visible through the glow. If Distortion is reduced to 0 the edge will be regular and smooth.
- Distortion: Determine how irregular the edge of the core is. Lower values give a smoother, more refined effect. Higher values will make the edge irregular, and increasingly distort the background behind the glow of the effect. This can help to make the effect feel more convincing, as part of the scene.
- Blend: Choose the blend mode that is used to composite the effect onto the underlying layers.