Saber Plugin No End and Start Points

[walterw79904460]

I've been using the new free Saber After Effects plugin for a couple of weeks now and it's great, but out of no where while editing with it, I go to the next clip to use it and the red circles that mark the stop and start of the blade are gone. I don't have a way to click and drag the start and stop points for the blade on each frame now. I went back to look at scenes I'd completed earlier in the project and the red circles had disappeared from those points too but they're still in the correct place. I didn't click and "on/off" button, I just went to the next frame and they went away.

Here's a link to a photo of my project in the timeline: https://i.imgur.com/XWR6k6u.jpg

[David Arbor]

Did you hide your layer controls? You can show and hide them with the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+H or the menu command View>Show Layer Controls

[Rick Gerard · Accepted solution]

In the future just drag your screenshots to the forum. It's a lot easier and even folks with mobile devices or folks that won't click on links can see them. You also should be revealing all modified properties of the layers that are giving you problems by selecting them and pressing the U key twice. Screenshots that don't show modified properties are almost useless in diagnosing problems.

As David said, you probably turned off layer controls. Clicking on the start or end point tool in the ECP (Effects Control Panel) should give you crosshairs. They are almost as useful as the targets.

I hope that your VFX comp is just one shot. There are an awful lot of short saber layers and the comp is about a minute and a half long. That's an awfully long shot for an action sequence.

I'm guessing that you are handling the places where the saber is behind one of your actors by just using another copy of Light Saber. A more efficient way to handle a shot like this would be to use 2 layers with the Saber Effect, one for each fighter, and then do some selective rotoscoping. It would be a lot easier to get fluid motion that matched the action in the scene. You can also open up the layer panel and choose to view the Saber paths. This may give you some help setting keyframes and creating smooth motion paths. It can be a lot easier than setting dozens of keyframes. If you use copies of the footage as saber layers You can turn off the saber effect to see the background then use the pen tool and Alt/Option, Ctrl/Cmnd keys as modifiers to bend the paths to follow the action without setting a lot of keyframes.

Check the view options or use the keyboard shortcut Shift + Ctrl/Cmnd + h to turn them back on and think about my suggestions.

[mamourbizbiz]

Hi, 

I think using the rotoscoping as a path for the saber is genius but I don't figure out how to proceed can you explain?

the only tool I have are the small target that you move at each frame and if I click on the rotoscope tool then he creates a mask and doesn't put keyframe in the corestart or coreend 😕

thanks for your help

[Santiago26542833dm8u]

i was also looking for the solution, thank you