Laser!

Today I created the laser beams which the Naboo fighter shoots at the rocks which explode, to do this I had a couple of options, one was to create the beam in 3DS max by applying the glow effect to an object and moving it across the screen, or I could create the laser beam within Adobe After Effects.
I opted with using After Effects, because I fancied a change of animating rather than using 3DS max all the time, I also believe that because After Effects is for creating special effects to existing clips, it was my best option.

First of all I imported my clip which I needed the laser to be in, and then I clicked on layer and created a new solid layer, I then clicked the option in the layer panel to allow a 3D layer, this meant that when I got round to positioning my layer that I could have it in whatever position I wanted, if I hadn’t checked the 3D option, then the laser would only be able to move up and down, and couldn’t rotate forward as if it was moving away into the distance.

I then resized the layer into a small rectangle, and I then in the effects and pre-sets panel I found the ‘CC cylinder’ option and dragged that onto the stage on top of the rectangle.

I then had to add the glow effect to the rectangle, I clicked on the effect menu and then went onto stylize and chose ‘glow’.
I then adjusted a variety of the settings of the glow effect, to get the desired effect that I wanted my laser to have, I changed the colours to green, colour A being a light green, which would be the inner and outer of the glow, Colour B being a darker more prominent green which was the main green of the glow.

Other settings which were changed were the glow threshold and glow intensity.

Once I had the laser beam created, I was only left with animating, do to this I dropped down the transform option in the layer options, and here I could play around and change the positioning settings, I changed the orientation, and all of the axis to position the beam in the correct starting position, I then set the key frame. I then moved along the time line and positioned the beam at the rock where it would finish, and then set another key frame, when the animation played the Naboo fighter moved in space and then as approaching the rock, fired a laser at it which disappeared at the rock explodes. I decided that I needed more than one, so I duplicated the layer which gave the exact same settings as the previous one I animated, and I then tweaked the settings in the layer options, I moved the key frames so that the second laser was slightly after the first, and it missed the rock and carried on into the distant.

I am extremely pleased with the outcome of what I created in After effects, it is the first time I have used the program properly and I found it okay to work with, the lay out and menus etc. are a little bit alien, however I was able to create the laser easily enough. I feel that it really topped of the animation, and finished it off nicely.