[EliteMaster17]

Well herro there. I'm EliteMaster, blah blah blah. I've found a little helpful use of tools for editing screenshots in Garry's Mod via Gimp. It's pretty damn easy to use and I find it useful for Lightsabers and/or lights. This is a QUICK edit; so don't expect Hollywood style FX.

First off, go into Garry's Mod and set your prop accordingly with whatever you want to be lit up (whether it be lights on a set of armor or a laser sword), in this case the prop being Kai Leng's sword from ME3. Here's the setup I had for him:



In order to create some realism in the shot, you're going to want to put a lamp in a spot where the light from the sword would be emitted. So the shadow from the sword wouldn't be visible, I placed the lamp almost directly above the shot. Here's a look at the positioning:



Now add whatever other effects to your shot that you want. Here's the shot with some post-processing features such as color mod and super DoF.



Go ahead and start up Gimp; and open the file you'll want to edit. (Garry's Mod screenshots are usually located in OS:C > Computer > Steam > Userdata > 77510442 > 760 > Remote > 4000 when taken with Steam itself.) Make a new layer and call it whatever you'd like. I called it Lightsaber. Make a selection around what you want to glow in this layer, like so.



Now take whatever base color you want for the blade and color in the selection. After that, right click the layer in the toolbox and hit "Duplicate Layer". Then color the top layer white. Then hit select none.

After this, go up to Filters > Blur > Gaussian Blur, and click on the first blade layer. Make the blur around 9 to 15, as anywhere from there seems to be fine. Reshow the same blur on the white layer, but this time make the blur 2.0. Duplicate the layers for different effects and then when you seem to be about satisfied, merge them down to the "Lightsaber" layer. I personally didn't put enough lighting on the Engie's face in the shot so it's a bit off, but that's not a problem. This was just a rough example. Here's the finished shot:



If anything wasn't clear, I posted something wrong, or this was/wasn't helpful just shoot me a comment down below!

Regards, EliteMaster

[GoldenBullet]

This uh, kinda isn't worth it's own thread mate.

No offence intended

[EliteMaster17]

Well okay. :V Where should I put it then? I found the tool useful and just wanted to share it but if it's not enough then by all means I'll just remove it.

[TheGoodDoctorF]

It may not be the best tut out there, but I'm glad that people are out there willing to take the effort to do it. Have a <3

[The Gobo]

Someday... I'm going to use this...

[Joazzz]

This is a good opportunity for me to share my secrets. What I did:

[OficerHonkHonk]

This could be used for tracer effects as well it seems

[Uncle Bourbon]

OficerHonkHonk posted:

This could be used for tracer effects as well it seems

Or you could just use the particle maker, which is really good.