Beam Me Up - Video Light Painting in Motion
A really cool looking visual effect is light painting.
In photography, the effect is achieved by using a slow shutter speed, but recently, I wanted to obtain the same effect in video. Turns out it’s a bit more complex than changing your camera’s shutter speed, but if you use Apple’s Motion, the effect can be done quite easily, in just a few steps.
STEP 1
Import the footage that you want to use for you video light painting and title the group subject.
STEP 2
Create a new group and title it null object. Create a new shape, I’ve chosen a rectangle, but it really doesn’t matter. What does matter, though, is to make sure that it has no fill and no outline, basically making it a ghost shape.
STEP 3
Track your ghost shape to whatever you are going to use to do the light painting with. In this case, I’ve decided to use my subject’s fingertip.
STEP 4
Wherever you want your subject to start light painting, add a particle emitter, the one that I’ve decided to use is the Magic Dust emitter as I have found that it gives you a pretty good place to start.
STEP 5
Add a match move behavior to your particle emitter and use the ghost shape as its source.
STEP 6
In the inspector for the particle emitter, change the life parameter to 10 and the speed parameter to 0.
STEP 7
Under the particle, change the random motion amount to 0.
STEP 8
Change the gravity parameter to 2.
STEP 9
This is personal preference in terms of what thickness of light you are going for, but for this, I’ve changed the scale over life to about -55 for the scale at start of life and -25 for scale at end of life.
STEP 10
This is also a preference depending on what color you want your light to be, but here I’ve changed my light to a blue-ish gradient in my inspector.
STEP 11
Add a gaussian blur to your light, making it look more natural. The amount should be either a 1 or 2.
THAT’S PRETTY MUCH IT!!!
YOU SHOULD NOW HAVE SOMETHING THAT LOOKS A BIT LIKE THIS: