Motion tracking a lightsaber

[ibend1]

I am not sure if this is how you do it in after effects, but, is it possible to motion track a lightsaber rather that editing it frame by frame?

[DaiMoGui]

I think it would depend on quite a few factors.

Contrast on tracking point to rest of footage.
Amount of blur or interlacing.
How good your camera is (3cdd / 3cmos / optics)Then you would need to make a 4 point mask, or use a saber plugin, then link the control point to the tracking data.

The issue with this is that it won't have certain things that you would expect. Like the fanning of the blade or perspective.

If you decide to give it a try, I would be interested in seeing how it turns out.

-DaiMoGui

[FyceDesigns]

I guess you could motion-track the top of the blade and where the blade and handle meet, but making both parts different colors then assigning the track points. After you do that, I'm sure you could figure out a way to connect the points by a line, then set the line to be white, then feather it out to whatever the lightsaber color is. Good luck!

[EnipProductions]

Well if you buy a sabre that lights up (I can't remember there name but they are way overpriced) and then darken the room quite abit then maybe but you will have do a 4 point track as mentioned before also you will probably have to go over the track and correct afew hick ups.

[Black Dawn Productions]

There is a video tutorial of this on video copilot. here's a link.
http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials.html?id=40

another version of it is also on the site. Here's the other link.
http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials.html?id=39

Idk, if it'll help or not.

[DaiMoGui]

Well if you buy a sabre that lights up (I can't remember there name but they are way overpriced)

Master Replicas Force FX (http://www.amazon.com/Master-Replicas-Yoda-Force-Lightsaber/dp/B000ML91WK)

There is a video tutorial of this on video copilot. here's a link.
http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials.html?id=40

another version of it is also on the site. Here's the other link.
http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials.html?id=39

Idk, if it'll help or not.

This is a great tutorial and plugin.

While Andrew's plugin helps the creation, you still need to rotoscope the sequence. I think the idea of this post was to get away from that all together.

-DaiMoGui

[EnipProductions]

Yea those are the sabers. They have gone down in price since I last checked but there still not budget. Though they do produce some sweet looking results in a dark enviorment.

[ciwi286]

The problem with if you motion track is that if the saber is swung to fast, goes behid something or changes perspective (tilts towards or away from the camera) you could end up with some problems. Like daimogui said you wont have fanning of the blade either. But to answer you question...yes it's possible. My advice is to just rotoscope it.

[google550]

Word.