Hi

Does anyone know of any software for adding muzzle flash effects to video footage. Preferably free software and is it easy to do?

Cheers

Darren

Don't know of any specific software but there are some good tutorials out there using photoshop.

I would have to say the best bet would be using photoshop too, maybe you can use After effects so the muzzle flash will track as well.
UKCM @ www.colonialmarines.co.uk
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A man may fight for many things: his country, his principles, his friends, the glistening tear on the cheek of a golden child. But personally I'd mud wrestle my own mother for a ton of cash, an amusing clock, and a sack of French porn.

Thanks for the info guys. I downloaded a trial version of FXHome LAB HD last night. I sued some footage from Alien War and after about 10 minutes I had a fairly convincing effect. With practice I'm sure you could get some great looking shots from this. Unfortunately it's ridiculously expensive, although there is another version for £65. The trial version puts a white cross on the screen after you have rendered it so you can't use any thing you do from the trial version, bloody cheap skates.

Darren

I just uploaded my test of this software and the effect is pretty good. bear in mind I did this in 10 minutes and did not tweak with any of the available settings. So like I said I think some good results could be had with this package.

Right click on the link and save to your computer

www.friendly-skies.co.uk/...l/Test.mpg

Darren

Can you do anything with this one?

home.comcast.net/~josephr..._small.wmv

What are you doing with a gun in space?

Darren, you have to have some ambient flash to really sell it. Especially in the dark like that. I use camera flashes for ambient flash, and have experimented with putting my hand over a spot light as well for an uneven strobe effect.

I'll post some pictures once my MAC is set up.
Njc-------------

Yeah I know what you mean Noeland but this was footage filmed years ago and was never intended to have any effects put on it. If I was shooting something now then I would take into account post production work. The point I was making is that even after just 10 minutes using the software it produced a nice effect but obviously not what you would call "finished"

Cheers

Darren

You could always make a frame grab of the frame where the flash is an use photoshop to lighten it up and then drop it back into the movie.
UKCM @ www.colonialmarines.co.uk
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A man may fight for many things: his country, his principles, his friends, the glistening tear on the cheek of a golden child. But personally I'd mud wrestle my own mother for a ton of cash, an amusing clock, and a sack of French porn.

Like Mantroon said, you can use use Photoshop to brighten up the area around the flash and create ambient effects. I found the best result using 2-3 frames for the whole effect.

If you are using something like Premiere Pro to edit, it's very easy to export/import frames from and to Photoshop.

I messed with the demo that was posted above for only 4-5 hours last night (and on an early AM work day today too! Psycho!) and it's got an okay learning curve.

Of course, like any real man, I didn't read the manuals and just started pasting effects onto a video chunk.

After several mixups, I'm almost done with my experiment, and will post it soon for everyone's horror/amusement. Just need to capture a couple sound effects and it will be good.

Edit: Well, finished the test project tonight. Only took about 5 hours after all the video and audio editing.

Right Click the link below and 'Save as.' File is about 8Mb in size, appx. 45 seconds in length 720x480.

www.rookscastle.com/videos/auto9_FXtestfinal.divx

Russ



"There's nothing worse than people desperate to have fun."
-Patton OswaltEdited by: [url=http://p220.ezboard.com/bthealienslegacy.showUserPublicProfile?gid=rook3>Rook 3[/url] at: 6/28/06 9:21 pm

Hmmm, can't open it.

What are you doing with a gun in space?

heck. Just click the file to view then. I noticed windoze wants to save the file as an .AVI, when it's a .DIVX file.

I clicked on it and it seemed to play okay... after the long-ish download.

edit: Well, I did the 'save as' thing and saved it on my desktop as an .avi file and it worked for me.

Can anyone else get it to work?

Russ



"There's nothing worse than people desperate to have fun."
-Patton OswaltEdited by: [url=http://p220.ezboard.com/bthealienslegacy.showUserPublicProfile?gid=rook3>Rook 3[/url] at: 6/28/06 9:26 pm

IE was able to view it. Damn you hansome...
Very cool software and nice job.

What are you doing with a gun in space?

LOL!


My test project's not up to TV/Feature film standards, but over all I was pretty darn impressed with how it turned out in such a short period of time. I saved it with 24p pulldown to remove that 'direct to video' look. Thanks for the compliments!

Russ



"There's nothing worse than people desperate to have fun."
-Patton OswaltEdited by: [url=http://p220.ezboard.com/bthealienslegacy.showUserPublicProfile?gid=rook3>Rook 3[/url] at: 6/28/06 9:57 pm

The problem I have with using photoshop for any visual FX is that it looks like you used photoshop to do visual FX. There are better, easier, more effective ways.

Ambient light from a muzzle flash in a dim or dark room especially, doesn't just lighten things, it creates shadows, and light gradients or differing temperatures that cannot be duplicated in PS without serious time.

Now if you're shooting in full daylight, or a well lit room, it's not an issue.

I just got my Mac back in order this week, so I will post some examples of low light stuff in a few days time.

Njc------------

It worked for me Rook. Looked pretty good.
Like I said if you spent some time with the software then some really good results could be had I think.

Darren

Here are a few shots showing what I am speaking of.

Before firing
[img]http://www.propaholics.wolfchasers.com/uploader/users/noeland1/tank%20pre%20fire%202%20copy.jpg[/img]

The moment the blank is fired
[img]http://www.propaholics.wolfchasers.com/uploader/users/noeland1/tank%20fire%202%20copy.jpg[/img]

And yes, Tank is looking to his left in that last picture, doesn't read on the moving image though, thank goodness

Note the shadows created, and the differening degrees of light being thrown around in the second frame.

Now, even the camera flash trick doesn't always sell it, sometimes it just looks like someone taking pictures out of frame! But it helps.

Njc------------------------

From all the samples I have seen, they all lack the "real world" effects mentioned on the previous post.

other than going at it with photoshop, the only other way would be to do something practical whilst shooting the footage (blanks for example).

I did think of one idea though. As a round is discharged, try using a 'flash frame'. basically replace one frame of the footage with a frame that is completely white. This has two effects #1 it will look liek the gunfire has washed out the camera, #2 the viewers eye will react to the sudden bright flash, for a split second afterwards, as the pupil dilates, the eyue will not be able to take in as much information as it normally would. Combine this with the muzzle flash effect and it could work wonders. (hopefully):D
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A man may fight for many things: his country, his principles, his friends, the glistening tear on the cheek of a golden child. But personally I'd mud wrestle my own mother for a ton of cash, an amusing clock, and a sack of French porn.

In addition to a few of the things already mentioned, I think a little bit of unrestrained fury could be beneficial -- ie. the proper look of a real recoiling firearm and the person wielding it fighting to control it.

Also, on Russ's video test footage (very nice by the way), I think that if in addition to trying to fake the recoil just a little, a tighter muzzle flash pattern would appear more realistic. I haven't downloaded the demo to play with it myself, but I would guess that this is just a parameter that needs to be tweaked.

Ideally, if this were a project that I were working on, I'd take a look at some film footage that has the same look and feel for what I would like to achieve, and then borrow it on DVD to pick it apart frame-by-frame to see what's going on... size and duration of muzzle flash, character movement and jarring due to recoil, flash shadows, frame white-outs, etc...

I would love to see more 'tests' of this sort of stuff!
Rick "Ripstick"

[img]http://www.Route73.com/USCM/images/Ripstick_Aliens_Legacy_Banner_2006.jpg[/img]

There's a lot of good resources out there for this kind of stuff. Here's a few things I came across:

* Tutorial 1
* Tutorial 2
* Tutorial 3
* Tutorial 4
* Free downloadable gun flash footage

Most, if not all of these are free.

-Alex
"The M41-A. When you absolutely, positively have to kill every mofo in the room. Accept no substitutes."

Um, ever seen movies like Die Hard or Lethal Weapon?
Or Aliens? The "heros" don't "fight" with the weapon much. Overexaggerated recoil doesn't look that much more realistic.

Besides, the idea of a weapon (in many cases) is to reduce recoil so your barrel stays on target for follow up shots. Makes it harder to kill the enemy if you're fighting the weapon. Might as well whip out your sword and start hacking.

Now, if I were firing a... Ruger Redhawk in .44 Magnum (which I HAVE done...) then you'd see all sorts of exaggerated recoil. Because, yes, when it comes to .44 magnum, I'm a wuss. I can admit it.



I totally agree. Like I said, I didn't read the manual, and only slightly messed with the settings. The flashes in my video should be much "tighter" and less "gassy" looking. Plus, the auto 9 has a vented barrel shroud/weight, so there should be 3 jets of flame instead of just one. But in the demo you can't mod the existing flame effects (aside from size/density/color), or create your own.

Russ


"There's nothing worse than people desperate to have fun."
-Patton Oswalt