VFX lightning tut

I found this tutorial on youtube done by 'Surface Studio'

Though this tutorial he explains the basic on the Lightning effect within after effects and how to control them. I found interesting is the whip tool and expressions to make the lighting animate it self over time this tool/expression could be very useful later on in my project.

Lightning tut 2

In this tut he uses a adjustment layer, over the top of his film then follows it with effects -> Obsolete -> lighting. From here I would get a very thin lighting, this is very different compared to the Advance Lighting as it doesn't glow as effective but within after effects I can use the glow effect on the adjustment layer to add realism and for the lightning to sit better in the scene.

I think I'll might use this lighting effect more than the advanced light due to the advanced lightning being very stiff and acts like lighting which strikes from the sky.

Maya Lightning (22/01/14)

I found this while looking around for better lightning effects other than the presets within After effects and use composting to reach a better understanding of VFX and not heavily rely on After effects to save the day. So here I watched this, sadly there was no talking just where to click so the rest I had to find out by my self, which was fun and was annoying due to the fact that I couldn't change the colour in the normal area but in the Attributes to control what the lighting does.

Here is my version of the lightning effect, as you can see from the default above I've change the colour of mine to be more blue teal ish colour which reassembles real lighting striking from the skies.

As a test run I really like this and think I will be using this effect in my VFX film.