After Effects -muzzle flash

[Niki Mundo]

I'm not impressed with what I've seen on youtube. It looks phoney and CGI'ed..it looks really bad.

 

Does anyone have any suggestions on simulated gunfire other that real firearm discharge?

 

What about a small squib in the tip of the airsoft barrel?

[Jamie Metzger]

www.videocopilot.net

[Valerio Sacchetto]

Blank rounds?

 

But be aware they can do damage, a professional must be in charge of handling them. If the gun is to be used from a distance from any living thing or valuable object then blank rounds give you the real thing.

[Valerio Sacchetto]

just remembered

http://www.cinematography.com/forum2004/in...showtopic=15168

 

a lot of background noise but also a lot of useful informations (it's a pity such an informative thread got hijacked)

[Will Earl]

Probably best not look at bad examples of fake muzzle flashes on youtube and look at video reference of real muzzle flashes. Composited muzzle flashes can look great, provided you put a bit more effort into it.

[Niki Mundo]

Thanks Will.

[Bob Hayes]

Soft air makes some gas power soft pellet guns where the slide actually moves. This could add authenticity to your safe gun play. Don't forget to cgi in an ejjecting shell. One frame slight motion blur.

[Dory Breaux DP]

Muzzleplug from FX Home does a really good job if you tweek it a bit. But i think the sound is what really sells it.

[Greg Johnson]

Remember in daylight you rarely see a muzzle flash on most firearms. Usually you just see a burst of air and smoke. Blanks have more power, so that's why your more likely to see a flash. Then the another problem is when people put in muzzle flashes they do a HUGE flash, but it doesn't light up the room at all,... kinda funny if you think about it.

[Phil Rhodes]

The problem with muzzle flashes, of which I have done heaps, is that even real ones start looking unrealistic if you study them hard enough. It's such an amorphous blob that it can look like almost anything.

 

Common errors include putting in a full-brightness flash for every trigger pull - have some of them invisible or only partially caught - or having them last longer than one frame. In fact they appear to me to be rather shorter duration events than 1/48s. Even fully-automatic weapons with a high rate of fire extremely rarely produce flash on every frame. Things like FN P-90s and Thompson guns (see: Aliens), which have a very high rate of fire, may do a few frames in a row, but it's a flickering flame not a constant one. Watch Starship Troopers, and notice that in some circumstances the weapons are firing at a rate close to synchronising with the camera - I assume something like four or six rounds per second - and there's one moment where a rifle is clearly being fired, but the sound department only actually put bangs on for the visible flashes. In the dark, they'll flare, too, so do some blurred additive glow. Since it's a one-frame event you can usually also put in the topslide movement.

 

As far as I can tell, live rounds tend to produce a more orangey flare than blanks and blanks are much more likely to produce sparks. Shotguns frequently produce sparks.

 

The real expert on this is Thomas Worth, but he's on vacation at the moment. There are some demos which I consider to be pretty reasonable on his site.

 

P

 

PS - his older stuff includes another demo here, which demonstrates the use of a simple particle system to add smoke.

[Niki Mundo]

yeah, Aliens is such a kick-ass masterpiece. Perfect.

What I remember more than anything else about the weapons was the sound of the gunfire. Remarkable..

 

Where can I get awesome reports at?

[James Steven Beverly]

I actually saw a prop rifle (M-16) with a light bulb mounted in the solid section of the flash suppressor and the switch rigged to the trigger, the battery (9vt) hidden in the clip and it looked pretty good. I would imagine a powerful LED with a yellow tint rigged much the same way wit some kind of flashing/ flickering set up would work fairly well when combined with canned smoke and a little misting.

Edited March 12, 2008 by James Steven Beverly

[Benjamin_Lussier]

If you want to comp-in a muzzle flash. The common mistake is to just add a flash at the end of the barrel.

 

The muzzle flash becomes a source of light for a frame or two. Look at the scene closely. How would the flash affect the scene? Mask out the parts of the image that would be affected by the flash, play with the brightness. ect. It can turn a nothing shot to a very convincing one.

 

That being said... nothing beats the good ol blanks.

[Brian Siano]

I'm doing a shoot in December where someone fires a 19th century pistol (once) in a closed room. The location's an historical landmark, so we really can't use anything like squibs or blanks that might cause damage to anything. So, I'm looking for a digital fix for post-production.

Can anyone suggest a website which has a decent selection of gun flashes that can be had for Real Cheap? I'll be using Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects, if that helps.

And if there's a site which offers some smoke to hang in the air after the pistol firing, that'd be wonderful, too.

 

(Sound would be helpful, too, but we may record that on our own.)

Edited October 27, 2015 by Brian Siano

[Phil Rhodes]

Try Det Films. Ancient firearms tend to produce lower-pressure flame, more smoke and perhaps some sparks, so you might want to look at shotgun effects for a reasonable match.

 

Truly good muzzle flash involves good acting, good editing (with use of a few frames snipped out or sped up), plus some compositing ability beyond just slapping it on top and setting it to "screen", which rarely convinces anyone.

 

P