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Vegas Sabers - Sound FX (and more)
There are a few more things that'll need to be done to polish this project up right, but once you've finished the basic Track Motion keyframing, things should be looking pretty good. Yeah, I know, you ran into some issues when the saber went behind objects and people: let's not worry about that just now. Instead, you should take a break and do something fun and easy: sound FX. This step takes about five minutes and will really begin to make your battle authentic.
Sound FX
OK, this step is too easy, so I'm going to explain it in one sentence. Go to:
<http://theforce.net/theater/postproduction/soundfx/saberfx_fergo.shtml>
and download the sound fx and put them in your project. Any questions?
Special Special FX
Another fun part of the project is adding special special FX. Some examples to think about and play with are:
- Lens Flare flashes when the sabers collide. Add the Lens Flare effect to the raw footage track, since it won't apply to transparent areas (like most of the saber tracks). Just a frame or two should be enough. Use keyframes to make the flare flash on and off. You may also want to drop an image into a track above the sabers, since the flare itself will be under the sabers.
- Motion blurred sweeping of the saber for fast action sequences. This will require you to make a new saber drawing of a saber in motion (blur FX will not work by themselves).
- Create a flicker by keyframing a Brightness plug-in. You can mass copy keyframes after you get a nice flicker going. Or you can use the new Flash plug-in from Sonic Foundry. Either way, the effect is added to the saber tracks.
If you haven't rendered to a file and sent this baby out to your camcorder and played it back on a television, now is the time. You will be suitably impressed with the results and so will your geeky friends.