| 00:00 | I am here in After Effects and I have
some text that I'd like to add a light ray
|
| 00:03 | effect to. Now I like to do my
lighting effects to duplicates of the original
|
| 00:07 | layer to give myself maximum
flexibility later on. So let me go ahead and take
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| 00:11 | my text layer, Command+D on Mac or
Ctrl+D on Windows to duplicate it, then
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| 00:15 | apply my light rays plug-in to the
duplicate. In this case I'm going to use
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| 00:20 | Trapcode's Shine. Trapcode > Shine.
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| 00:24 | Now Shine has a lot nice options to it.
You have many different options on how
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| 00:27 | to colorize your light rays. We'll go
ahead and pick up the original colors in
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| 00:31 | the logo. I want to go ahead and Boost
Light to get the more of a burnt out sort of look.
|
| 00:36 | And then I want to go ahead and
use blending modes to blend on the
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| 00:39 | top of the original logo. I'll use
something like Screen to go ahead and start out.
|
| 00:42 | Give it a nice glow there in the center.
|
| 00:44 | Now we hit RAM Preview and nothing
happens and this is the case with most light
|
| 00:48 | ray plug-ins. They render and they
just sit there and that's not really
|
| 00:51 | realistic. One of the reason I do like
Shine is that it does have this Shimmer
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| 00:55 | parameter that does add some animation
to the light rays. I'm going to crank it
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| 00:59 | up to see what's going on. I want to
add 200 to the Amount and 100 to the
|
| 01:04 | Detail. You will see some streaks
now inside my light rays and if I were
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| 01:09 | animate the Phase I would get some
movement to these streaks or to those rays
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| 01:13 | and it adds a very nice effect.
|
| 01:15 | But it's still a bit synthetic. It
doesn't look like dust. So let's go ahead
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| 01:18 | and add that dust in. The other
important part of this trick is you are going
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| 01:23 | to need some clip, either stock footage,
or one you created yourself of smoke
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| 01:28 | or dust, or something swirling about.
To start off, I want to use these clips
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| 01:32 | from the Artbeats' Aliens Atmospheres
collection and you see it's just some very
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| 01:36 | nice slowly drifting and swirling
smoke. Close that, add it on top of my
|
| 01:42 | composition. Then I want to go ahead
and use it as a luminance matte for my
|
| 01:48 | light rays. What that means is the
bright areas in the smoke will show
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| 01:53 | the light rays, the dark areas will not.
|
| 01:56 | Select it, nice. Now you see there are some
breakups in the pattern here. I want to go
|
| 02:00 | ahead and RAM Preview and you will see
this smoke drifting through the light rays.
|
| 02:06 | That's a good start. Now the
problem with lot of these smoke or dust
|
| 02:10 | clips is they don't have as much contrast
as you want. They darken down your light rays.
|
| 02:14 | So to add contrast, you can
use one of a variety of effects.
|
| 02:18 | In After Effects, I happen to like
the Color Correction > Auto Contrast
|
| 02:22 | Effect. What Auto Contrast does it
automatically move the black to the darkest
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| 02:27 | point and the whites in the footage
to the brightest point to maximize my
|
| 02:30 | contrast and the effect is usually
brightening my layer and you will see my
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| 02:34 | light rays are much brighter. Now when
I RAM Preview, you will see that the smoke
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| 02:37 | is a lot more obvious going
through here and a lot more interesting.
|
| 02:41 | You can do this manually by the way
by using the Effects which is Color
|
| 02:44 | Corrections > Levels. Looking at the
Histogram. This is what it looks like
|
| 02:51 | without Auto Contrast and just go
ahead and move the Input Black and Input
|
| 02:56 | White points to where you need it to
be to get the same effect. You can even
|
| 02:59 | play around the Gamma to decide what
sort of contrast you have as you go
|
| 03:03 | from the dark areas to your
light areas in your light rays.
|
| 03:05 | But if you are in a hurry, go ahead
and use Auto Contrast. Now how different
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| 03:10 | the source footage for the smoke will
give you different results. For example,
|
| 03:14 | let's go ahead and look at this clip,
AM117 also from Alien Atmospheres.
|
| 03:20 | Not only it doesn't have smoke, it has
underlying water with some bright spots
|
| 03:23 | moving around. So let's go ahead
and replace your smoke layer with this
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| 03:27 | water+smoke layer. I'll hold down
Command and Option on Mac, or Ctrl and Alt on
|
| 03:33 | Windows and hit the slash key and it
will automatically replace my selected
|
| 03:37 | footage. I hit 0 on the numeric keypad
to RAM Preview. It will take a second to
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| 03:42 | calculate here and now you will see an
addition to the smoke. I have got some
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| 03:46 | nice animation going on. I haven't even
animated the Shimmer parameter in Shine.
|
| 03:50 | This is all in the underlying footage.
|
| 03:52 | Let's try another clip. Artbeats has
several collections called ReelFire, which
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| 03:57 | has various smoke effects. This one
from ReelFire Collection 2 has very, very
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| 04:03 | fast moving smoke. So if I wanted a
much more dynamic effect, I'll go ahead and
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| 04:08 | replace my source footage with that.
RAM Preview and now you will see that
|
| 04:15 | I've got the smoke moving through
my light rays, which gives another
|
| 04:19 | interesting variation and
adds more animation to the scene.
|
| 04:22 | The other clip to try is from
Artbeats' Mayhem collection. This one is just
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| 04:27 | dust particles flying about. So this
will be a way of trying to recreate dust
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| 04:33 | flying about through your light rays.
I'll put that away. Go ahead and use
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| 04:38 | Command+Option+/ again to replace it,
RAM Preview and now where there were
|
| 04:43 | light rays you see dust particles
flying about and you don't have to use
|
| 04:47 | footage as you find it. You can
play with it further if you want to.
|
| 04:50 | For example, I'll open up the Effects
Controls again. In case of Auto Contrast,
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| 04:54 | I can play around with a White Clip
to go ahead and make the white parts of
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| 04:57 | these particles a lot more obvious
and now that's much more like snow
|
| 05:01 | falling. You can do the same thing
by adding a Levels effect after Auto Contrast.
|
| 05:06 | Another fun trick is to add an effect
such as Minimax. I'll select Channel >
|
| 05:11 | Minimax, set the Radius to 1 and now
you see I have converted my dust, these
|
| 05:16 | little square particles. I'll turn the
layer on by itself so you can see what
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| 05:19 | we have. Let's go ahead and bring
the contrast back down again.
|
| 05:23 | Makes it a little more subtle. There we go.
|
| 05:27 | Now I got spark leaves going through my
logo animation. And Minimax has other
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| 05:34 | options as well. Like Maximum Then
Minimum really creates an interesting kind of
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| 05:37 | hollowed out effect that I really like.
I'll go ahead and calculate that RAM
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| 05:41 | Preview. Minimax does take a couple
of seconds to calculate, but it's not so bad.
|
| 05:46 | And there you go. Nice particles
going through my dust. I'll turn that off
|
| 05:53 | and get back to normal.
|
| 05:54 | Now you can use this with whatever
volumetric lighting effect that you like.
|
| 05:59 | I happen to use Trapcode > Shine here,
but you can use other things such as Glow
|
| 06:02 | effects. I'm going to turn off my
Luma Matte so I can go ahead and see the
|
| 06:05 | unaffected light rays, turn off Shine
for now and apply another effect to this
|
| 06:11 | layer. So just say Trapcode >
Starglow, which are very nice glowing rays.
|
| 06:17 | Change the Colormap to something more
appropriate, such as this Heaven Preset.
|
| 06:22 | Crank up this Streak Length a little
bit to give a very nice look to it and
|
| 06:26 | then I'll go ahead and turn on my
Luminance Matte back on. Now I have got
|
| 06:29 | particles floating through my glow
effect or again I can try a different
|
| 06:33 | footage. I want to go ahead and go back
to my original drifting curling smoke,
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| 06:38 | RAM Preview and there you see I got a
very nice subtle, but more realistic look
|
| 06:46 | as my smokes drifts through
my volumetric lighting effect.
|
| 06:50 | Let me show you this trick with
another favorite plug-in of mine, Trapcode's Lux.
|
| 06:55 | Here is a composition that has
a couple 3D lights in After Effects.
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| 07:00 | There is a light; there is pool of light
it makes when it hits another surface.
|
| 07:04 | But you don't see anything in between.
Trapcode's Lux fills in volumetric light in
|
| 07:09 | between the light source and its
destination. So I'll go Layer > New > Solid.
|
| 07:14 | Again, make it the Comp Size. I'll just call
this lux lighting layer to keep it straight.
|
| 07:20 | I'll apply Effect > Trapcode >
Lux and immediately I see visible
|
| 07:27 | light for my light source in After
Effects to my other layers and Lux gives me
|
| 07:33 | other capabilities such as
designating a layer to cut off how far the light
|
| 07:37 | gets cast. You see now I no longer have
this light glowing underneath my floor.
|
| 07:40 | But the problem with Lux is again when
I RAM Preview, it's not moving. There is
|
| 07:45 | no animation to my volumetric light. So
I create it just I did my other examples.
|
| 07:51 | I go back to my Project panels, pick
some stock footage of some nice drifting
|
| 07:55 | smoke. Here is one of those
particularly interesting. Add it to the layer above
|
| 08:01 | my solid, which has Lux in it, go
ahead and blow out its levels. I can either
|
| 08:06 | use the Auto Contrast that I used
before or do it manually with the Levels
|
| 08:10 | effects. I bring my White Point down to
get some nice blowouts here. I bring my
|
| 08:16 | Black Point up to get some contrast
and then set my Track Matte for the Lux layer.
|
| 08:21 | I'll use my smoke layer as a
Luma Matte and now you will see some
|
| 08:25 | streaks going through my lights.
|
| 08:26 | I cue up a quick RAM Preview here
and now you will see my smoke layer is
|
| 08:33 | actually drifting through my
volumetric lights and it looks a lot more
|
| 08:37 | realistic than just having a solid
color of light. Just go ahead and use
|
| 08:41 | footage of smoke, dust, water vapor,
anything swirling about as a track matte
|
| 08:47 | for your volumetric light
effects inside After Effects.
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