Week 03: FX Work

Welcome back to my blog! This week, I made some adjustments and began work on several effects. I improved the shape of the main lightning to make it feel less stiff, began work on the electricity on the sword, and I started work on the sparks that appear at the contact point between the main lightning and the sword. I also found a temporary background and HDRI to use. The reason why I say temporary is because even though the backgrounds are close to what I want, they just aren’t quite to the quality that I would like them to be at. However, having the HDRI in my scene helps to better visualize the camera movement happening in the first shot.

While I still have some work cut out for me, I think I’m gradually getting closer to the desired shape for my lightning. Although, once I began thinking about creating lightning branching off from the main lightning, I realized that I would love to create a tool to help me control that. With that in mind, that will be one of my new goals this next week and I will begin research on how to create a lightning tool.

Feedback

I received some new useful feedback this week from my professor and my peers. The first being that I should move the start of the lightning so that it is out of frame. My professor also mentioned that since I am working on two separate shots, it would be best to have two separate scene files for each shot. This will help a lot when creating the shape for my main lightning because the shape of the lightning seems to be more dynamic in the wide shot versus the close-up. I still have to adjust the width variation along the lightning but for now I’m going to first focus on getting the tool fleshed out and then move back onto creating better glows and width variation.

Sword Lightning Setup

Sparks Setup