Create an Illuminating “Light Painting” Effect
Tutorial Details
- Program: After Effects, Trapcode Particular
- Difficulty: Beginner
- Run Time: 20:06 min
Final Product What You'll Be Creating
You’ve surely seen a “light painting” photograph by now. Sprint made it very popular in their latest advertising campaign, but it’s been around for a long time, Picasso made a light painting in 1949. In this tutorial Ben shows us how to easily recreate this effect using particles in After Effects.
This effect is loosely based off the traditional method of shooting still photographs with a slow exposure to capture the motion path of a light. This tutorial is filled with many small tips and tricks for Adobe After Effects to enhance the average user’s knowledge and speed up their workflow. If you would like some footage to experiment with, you can download the footage here
Tutorial
Download Tutorial .flv
File size MB
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That’s really Fantastic! I really like!
See my video’s at:
Http://www.youtube.com/fpviacom
WTF? lol…
nice…, thanks
Nice!
first to comment! yay this is freaking awesome. Thanks!
(this is kinda like the effect in Coldplay’s mv Lovers of Japan)
Nice :) i like that light effect, makes it look realistic
awuuuuu,…
i love it,..
hahahah i’ve seen Ben on YouTube a lot. He has good stuff, some lacking originality (taken mostly from Andrew Kramer’s videocopilot site) as you can tell from the picture above, but still good job.
Second..
God tutorial, thanks. Usefull for everyone
APONWAO
Thanks mate….looks brilliant…
I can imagine it on a bigger scale it would look awsome…
Greate tutorial – 10/10
Hey Ben, you did a great job on this tutorial. You made it look nice and simple and that is what its all about.
Cheers and I hope you have a few more up your sleeve :)
hey! i downloaded this vid from filefront a while ago ;)
Is it just me or is your audio way off from your video?
Yeah It was just me. haha
I’ve only watched 3 mins, but I swear there’s a huge audio delay to. I’ll watch the whole thing, it might just be some lag whilst it’s loading. Or again, it could just be me…and you i guess. lol
No its off for me too, by about a 2 seconds…
Let me clarify that previous comment, the quicktime download is fine, its the embedded clip that is off.
It’s way off… like 3-5 seconds. it’s like he says “lets just set this to two,” and like 4 seconds later you see that he changed something to two. Very, very off.
Nice one!
Wouldn’t it be easier if you used motion tracking instead of animating each frame?
If you filmed the footage so that the light streak were to come out of a light or something – most definately. But since my scene consisted of my finger with a ton of similar colours around it, it didn’t work so well.. You’d spend less time doing it manually in this case.
You’re right though, I shouldv’e mentioned the motion tracking. Thanks for the input!
Yeah I tried tracking fingers one time… doesn’t really work unless you are on a green or blue screen, or have a very contasting color
To help with motion tracking, could you stick a little white tape over your finger before filming? It would be covered by the glow in post so it would not be visible.
you could put a green dot on your finger and track it with the help of that.
thanks man for the toturial
O_O
That’s awesome!
Hey yeah great tut nice effect!
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An das Bueaka said, why not a motion traking? Wouldn’t it be easier?
great tut
Hey, I have followed this one before on youtube. I have even PM’d with you. Kewl ;)
Nice job
Not trying to call you out or say it should be taken down, but how’s this different than the one videocopilot did? Or did you do that one as well?
[EDITOR REPLY] Ben sent me some links to the VC tutorials he is referring to. I carefully reviewed those tutorials and while I can see where you could see similarities I’ve determined that it is not plagiarism. I think Ben came up with his own interpretation and use of the light streak which is a very common technique and not exclusive to video copilot. Having said that, we take tutorial plagiarism very seriously here at Aetuts+ so thanks for bringing this to our attention and please continue doing so in the future whenever you feel an author has committed plagiarism.
HEY! nice work.
Yes man, thak you a lot, i like
You can actually use a light named “emitter” as the emitter source in particular instead of a null object, which could also be used as the point light for the scene.
This would eliminating a bit of time and minimize layers as well as allow the ability to auto-orientate the light along the path if you were to use a spot light in a 3D environment.
Thank You
Nice effect even though the audio is a faster then the video.
great
great.
I love how many different ways you can do everything in AE
I’ve done something similar and totally different
wow, video copilot is really working for you. congrats on emulating instead of improving upon.
[EDITOR REPLY] Hi Jason, another reader sent me some links to the VC tutorials that he felt were copied in this tutorial. I carefully reviewed those tutorials and while I can see where you could see similarities I’ve determined that it is not plagiarism. I think Ben came up with his own interpretation and use of the light streak which is a very common technique and not exclusive to video copilot. Having said that, we take tutorial plagiarism very seriously here at Aetuts+ so thanks for bringing this to our attention and please continue doing so in the future whenever you feel an author has committed plagiarism.
You could have used tracking, it would have been much faster… But overall, a very nice tut!!
Been pretty lightweight around here since Alex Verlan’s raindrops tutorial. Jurrien’s handwriting tutorial was pretty good and Markus’ website tutorial was solid….but overall, pretty lightweight since Alex’s massive blockbuster. Hope to see something from Lloyd here pretty soon…..hoping….
Plagiarism might be a bit of a stretch, but I’m not sure if this is dissimilar enough from something that Video Copliot has come up with that I care.
I would wager most people are equally as capable of putting together two of Andrew Kramer’s techniques on their own. I wouldn’t say this the type of quality tutorial that will keep a site afloat.
Amen…..gotta fully agree. This is simply too much like AK’s stuff for me to give it too much of my time. Plus…it is just lightweight fluff. Really….
Magneeta? Is he a new villan in some mutant movie? :P
Really nice…
Just a question…
- Is it mandatory for a designer to have his room completely messed up with everything out of place?
just kidding…
Really really Awesome, im still learning cuz i just got adobe after effects. This tutorial ROCKs, im ganna watch it again
Thankyou all for your comments. I would like to set a few things straight though.
Video Copilot was a huge inspiration to me when I first got started with VFX, and as my YouTube channel reflects, it taught me a lot. Although, plagiarism is something I take very seriously. I offered this tutorial to AEtuts because of the outstanding questions I had about the effect on YouTube. Kind of a favour – giving this website a bit more popularity. Although I can see why some complaints are being made – and for that I’m sorry.
The idea was completely original and was made before I even knew about Video Copilot. It’s just been spruced up in this tutorial. I know I can’t prove that, so you’ll just have to take my word. But keep in mind, I’m trying to teach people more about how After Effects works (to the best of my knowledge), and not just the final effect so you can take the information and apply it elsewhere.
There have also been some complaints about the simplicity of the tutorial. I try to get as in depth as I think necessary so that everybody understands what I’m doing and why I’m doing it. The audience isn’t filled with entirely After Effects guru’s. So in saying it’s too easy, that means I’m achieving what I set out to achieve.
Comment by Mike:
“I wouldn’t say this the type of quality tutorial that will keep a site afloat.”
Never fear! I’ve already submitted a few more tutorial ideas on effects I whipped up at work. These effects are a lot more complex and are 100% original (unless somebody has done something like it before that I’m unaware of).
Again, I’m deeply sorry for the confusion and simplicity of this tutorial.
Hi Ben,
don´t care about these people “hating on you” out there. You´ve done a pretty solid tutorial on your own without copying or steeling something. Although this tutorial may not be the most complex one ever (which isnt god or bad!) – I learned a lot from it and it was fun to folllow it. Especially I like the technique of using the 3D lights for the lightmood overall.
But I also have question: Why didnt you use the standard after effects glow for the particles? I mean its cool that you showed how to build our own glow effect, but you didnt even mention the standard glow inside AE.
So keep on doing your thing. I am shure we will see a lot of good things from you in the future.
Greetings from Germany.
Don’t apologize dude, I got a few hate emails myself in my day, just from people looking at stuff on my website. People can hid behind a computer screen and say whatever they want.
Point is, Lloyd approved the tutorial, as well as you informing him in the first place that it might get mistaken for VC ideas.
I think you did a killer job, and don’t let these people bring you down. Keep it up man, you doin awesome.
“Video Copilot was a huge inspiration to me when I first got started with VFX”
“The idea was completely original and was made before I even knew about Video Copilot.”
hmm?
hola BEN no hablo ingles tratare de traducir esto tambein necesito de tu ayuda amigo, comence tu tutorial pero en el momento es que aplicas el efeto nulo y mueve la flcha de la opcion que sale abajo de pocision xy a el efecto nulo me tranco por que no me sale esa opcion y de verdad no se que hacer por que al correr el video no me sale en la forma que sale en el tutorial subiendo recto sino normal las particulas por todos lados ayudame que hago.
Ben, I doubt your apologies are needed.
This is an absolutely fantastic site and the work is top-rate. This idea that all work must be original is a little vague and self serving to posters that use such terms to qualify the content.
I mean, what is original for a free tutorial?… really???… by bypassing the general idea of simple FREEEEEEE education (bit arrogant for people to think they’re ENTITLED to get all of this for free, right, but these are the extraordinary expectations of the ill-informed today), how would anyone learn if nothing is copied or deconstructed…? or if this tute is only done by one person at one time with one audience?? Do you people realize that the light bulb was invented by numerous people before Edison “invented” it? That means that many more people than Edison had this idea and that Edison actually COPIED other people’s work, then patented his version. So get real.
There are always people entering this industry and without tutes like this on sites like this, people may never discover their passion for this kind of thing. Ignore the self-serving posts, they’re easy to spot. I like that you’re avatar is an homage to AK, as I’m sure he would.
Overall I think plagiarism in the post world is a bit of a non sequitur.
Nice works, Ben, I am very glad and in fact surprised that you covered a topic that Henry The Jedi also managed to cover on his training DVD.Check out Henry The Jedi’s work on Advnaced Lightstroke animation at http://www.henrythejedi.com/prod01/prod01_ae_unmatched_ch05_preview.html
The main difference is that Henry uses only After effects, instead of using the very expensive Trapcode plugin that not even a quarter of visual effects artists out there can afford. anyways, congrats
not even a quarter?! what are you on about? How can VFX artists not afford particular…but can somehow afford AE that is 3x the price! I know untrained 18 yr olds who earn enough to buy particular in two days work, so how is it that professional artists can’t afford this very fairly priced plugin?
You refer to yourself in the third person, which is always a little bit disconcerting.
yeah I’m not sure what you’re complaining about but your attack is motivated by what…hmmm? Let me guess. And the moderators think this an all american (not white supremacist fear) comment. Remove this like you remove the people of colors posts you don’t like or are a little too afrocentered. I’m sick of this.
Henry love your work and thank you for the map tutorial. I’ve been waiting for something as concise as this instead of a lot of talking. Thanks for being focused and professional.
Awesome, loved it!
You are a legend. Ive been trying to do this for aages. Just been waiting on a nice tutorial like this to come along.
THANKS!!
Fanfreakintastic
Thanks for the tutorial. I appreciate your time and skill.
Yeah…Nice work man! Cool technique and I appreciated your variations with using this effect.
dude I was in the process of recording the same tutorial… great what I am supposed to do now?
Show me up, of course :P
Hahaha but that wouldn’t be very fun. I do use a different technique to this. Maybe I could submit it as an alternate way to do it.
And great tut btw.
Too much “wows & awesomes”. But that’s true, In creativity there is a time when is hard to don’t step in something like videocopilot…
Nice delivery, clear and concise commentary. Keep up the good work.
The lighting effect was very unique, I loved it. I definently have to try this one out at some point.
You also explained the whole “matte”ing thing very good as well since I was always confused as to what it was and how it works.
I still am, but I know a little more :D.
Great tut.
Yeah, it’s pretty hard to explain fluently and in one go. At least for me. I’ll give it another shot some other time ;)
hi ben i saw this in your channel long time ago when searching for the ipod commercial , it looked great, and the tutorial is perfect, that 3d light that glows the room make a perfect final effect.Congrats , give up on haters , never give up on good things.
Peace
Does anyone know how to make this look more organic? I want to have the light streak very smooth and i cant figure out how… HELp
Nice effect thanks
any one have download link of this tutorial…bs here download link is not working…too slow site but really wow. thanx reply me.