White Flash thing

Support Animation and Rigging
1

Hi Everybody,
I’m doing an animation of a sword. I want the sword to fly in front of the camera; then i want a white “light” (a fuzzy white blob going the length of the blade) to start small going along the length of the blade gradually getting bigger untill it make the entire screen white for about 1/8 a second

Basicly making a flash effect but starting out slow

Then when the white goes away i want the logo of the FIRST Robotics team i’m doing this for (unofficially, just for fun and they can see if they want it).

The logo i plan to just texture a plane with the image, that im fine on, its the flash of light im not sure how to do because i actually want to see the light.

Any suggestions?

2

Hi, as far as the light flash goes, I also did a sword anim, and to create the flash I used a lamp behind the camera and then used the Glow sequence effect. Is this similar to what you are wanting?

http://www.filelodge.com/files/hdd5/97007/sword0001_0049.mov <2.33 MB Quicktime

3

I’m assuming the flash you’re refering to is the reflection off the sword in yours. What i’m looking to get is to have a white area which you cannot see the sword or anything whic would eventually cover the whole screen making it white. so the flash would be basicly in front of the sword but i want it to look like it originated from the blade.

BTW: That sword looks awsome! :smiley:

4

OK - It’s after midnight here, so I’m going to bullet point this one and try and give a more detailed answer in a day or two…

You can use a halo to produce the flashy reflection that gradually grows as it moves along the sword, and use the sequence editor to cross fade to an all white image, then back to the “hero” shot of the logo after a few frames.

5

Damn - I must learn to sleep some time!

Here’s a blend file of what I was talking about.

It uses multiple scenes in the sequence editor.

You’ll need to specify a save location for the render file and I’ve set it for quicktime, so feel free to change it.

BLEND FILE

Need to sloop now bef4 I strat to make spolling misteaks.

:o

6

That confuses me more than…ANYTHING! :o Is there any way to do this in a simpler way?

Or could you just explain the .blend a little more cuz i am totally lost. I’ve never even used sequence editor before! Plz help a noob out :frowning:

7

Sorry - I wrote that very late at night!

I put it together in 3 SCENEs, and used the sequence editor to put the scenes together.

Um… - OK do-re-me time… Let’s start at the very beginning…

A blender file can contain different scenes, each scene being a complete, seperate world. You can change between scenes from a drop down menu located at the top of a default screen that starts with “SCE:scene name”

Select the sword scene from this drop down and select the “Model” screen layout from the drop down to it’s left (SCR:1-Model)

Now you can see how I put together the sword with an object containing a single vertex (called FlashHalo). The halo contains a special class of material that renders as that sparkly star effect.

The halo is parented to the blade, and made to move with respect to it, so that it travels up the edge of the blade.

The blade is, in turn, parented to the handle, so the whole sword can fly it.

I used simple keyframing to control the movement of the sword. (Frame 1, place the sword in its initial position and press I for Insert Keyframe, then select LocRot for Location and Rotation, then go to frame 120, reposition the sword tnd to the same.)

Material parameters can also be keyframed.

In the materials window, frame 1, set the halo size to 0 and press I, then select Halo Size for the keyframe.

Frame 80 - same thing - Halo size = 0

Frame 120, set halo size to 6 and keyframe that too.

OK - so why the whole bit with the sequence editor???

Well - you wanted the animation to fade to white, then down to the logo, so firstly, we need a white and a logo.

You can just make a Jpeg of these if you wish, but I wanted to wrap the whole thing up in a blender file and couldn’t be bothered at 1am to create seperate images.

If you change the scene to SCE:AllWhite, you’ll see it’s just a camera with the world settings set to white.

If you change to SCE:ProductName, it’s just a text object - no real time taken there - it was just an example!

OK - Now let’s look at the sequence editor…

Change scene to SCE:sequence and change the screen layout to SCR:4-Sequence.

The sequence editor has a neat trick… all the bits of media being mixed in a sequence have their own individual track (that’s the coloured bars on the bottom bit), but it’s possible to encapsulate a collection of tracks inside what’s called a meta track, which is then treated as track in it’s own right.

In the same way you edit an object, you can edit one of these “Meta” tracks - Right click on the lower track to select it and hit TAB to enter it.

Now you can see how the 3 scenes have been pulled together and crossed over to make the final anim.

The reason I used a meta track (which you can close again by hitting TAB by the way) was because I wanted to apply a glow effect to the whole thing, so I needed to make it a single track to apply the effect to it.

I hope this clears things up a bit. Have a play with it, poke it, prod it, push it around and see what you can do!

Cheers.

8

I create my flashes in the 2D world. You can call it post pro.
I do it in Macromedia Flash but you can use anything for it.
I assume Blenders sequence editor too.
Basically I put a white field in front of everything making sure it spans the entire image.
I then assigned a simple animation so that in only a few very fast frames (change fps to something like 24 instead of 12) from 0% alpha to 100% and then back to 0% alpha.
Your eyes won’t notice the “alpha tween” but trust me it’s better then just putting a white plane on a certain frame.

I usually put several of these anims right after each other to mimic a thunder flash.
Very easy and dead efficient.
P

9

OK, Theres just a few things i don’t understand. First, how do you tell the halo what to do (in this case, follow the sword)? do you just move it and keyframe it (if so, how did you get it to go along the sword? I know you said you parented it to the sword but wouldn’t that just move in a fixed position with the sword?

Second, What are the light blue lines sticking out from the faces on the sword? I’ve seen these on annother model but never found out what they were.

Thats all for now,
Thanks

10

Before I animated the movement of the sword, I made the sword the parent of the single FlashHalo object. (Select FlashHalo, Shift-Select Sword, Ctrl-P and “Make Parent”)

Then I keyframed the movement of the halo - positioned it against the blade base, I-Key and select Loc - Keyframes are with respect to the parent object!

Now go to end frame and move the halo to the end of the blade, and I-Key, Loc again.

Now back to the beginning and keyframe the sword.

In Blender, each face is considered to have a “real” side and a “Not real” side. Using UV mapping to place textures on faces, you can only see the "Real"side. It can also effect shadows 'n stuff.

The blue lines are drawn perpendicular to a face in the direction of the “Real” side. They are called “Face Normals” and you’ll be hearing more about them as you play with Blender more. Especially the game engine which uses UV mapping for all it’s texturing.

In the mesh editing buttons, you’ll find a button called “Show Normals”. Click it to turn normals (the little blue lines) on and off.

11

Oh wow, Thank you :smiley: I never really thought of keyframeing each object seperatly.

Is there a way to see the entire animation without having to render it?

I ask this because i don’t know what your fade to white will look like but i was thinking, is there any way i could have a white object that it totally white but becomes more and more transparent as you get to the edge so it will look like it’s the halo getting bigger and bigger untill your screen is totally white rather than the whole thing fadeing at once?

12

You’d be surprised how well it takes people - the eye focuses on thegreater movement - the halo and when the scene fades to white the brain thinks the halo is out shining the rest of the scene!

To answer your question, however, to render just the sword component: change to the sword scene and the model layout (See previous post about scenes and screen layout presets) - switch off the “Do Sequence” button in the render buttons and away you go*

  • Don’t forget to set an appropriate file and file type to render to!

Edit - Sorry - I just reread your question and I’m not sure I answered it…

To see the fade effects, you’ll have to render it as it’s been set up in the sequence editor and you need to output the sequnce.

Took me about 4-5 minutes to render the whole thing the other night. Hmmm - time to make a cup of coffee.