light source facing camera
by Ariane Fisher
on
Aug 20, 2009 at 3:14:03 pm
Is there a way in Motion 3 to have a light source face the camera? As a workaround, I was able to add a glow to a circle so that it looks like a light source, but of course, couldn't get any light rays to emanate.
Re: light source facing camera by Ariane Fisher on Aug 20, 2009 at 9:07:53 pm
Yes, I did try that. I can get the circle to glow, but the maximum expanse on the light rays doesn't expand very far at all. I also tried all the other glow filters and a combination of them. Is this possible with Motion 4? I'm not looking for shadows or reflections at this point, just a light source with rays emanating. Like you would see if the spot light shined at the camera.
Re: light source facing camera by Ariane Fisher on Aug 21, 2009 at 9:42:55 pm
Thanks for your help. I tried it. While it does make the circle and glow get quite a bit bigger, it's not quite what I'm looking for. The glow is still very, very close to the circle. I guess what I'm looking for is a large circular gradient of light coming out of the circle. Now that I put it into words, I'll try and duplicate it in Motion. I'm just not sure that it's do-able in Motion 3 (or 4 for that matter). Is this one of those things I would need AE for?
Re: light source facing camera by Ariane Fisher on Aug 25, 2009 at 3:27:52 pm
Thanks so much for your help. I think what I created just might work for me, with a little tweaking. It's supposed to look like a light source with rays emanating. If I add some flickering, clean up the gradient, and use it in the background, it should be good. Let me know if you have any other suggestions to make it more realistic.
Re: light source facing camera by Ariane Fisher on Aug 25, 2009 at 4:46:33 pm
I forgot to post how I did it, in case anyone would like to duplicate this effect.
I created a circle, filled it with yellow, and made sure it was centered at 0,0. I then added the following filters: light rays, glow, aura, and bloom. I maxed out the "amount" setting on bloom and light rays.
I then created a second group called rays. In this group I created two circles. The first was a very large one filled with a white-to-yellow radial gradient. I then added an image mask to this circle. The second circle was the same size as the first, filled with a grayscale radial gradient. Both gradients need to start at 0,0. On the grayscale circle, the gradient needs to end at a large negative number. In this case I used -395. Both circles in the rays group need to be positioned at 0,0 to perfectly align with the first one. I dropped the grayscale circle into the image mask of the yellow gradient circle and set the source channel to luminance.
With the rays group behind the original circle, you get this effect.
Re: light source facing camera by Winston A. Cely on Aug 29, 2009 at 2:41:43 pm
What about using the lens flare filter? I don't really like the one that's built into Motion because it only resembles what a flare might look like if directly facing into the camera. If the pic you posted is what you're looking for the lens flare filter might be a nice touch. I just wish it would mimic what a lens flare does when at an angle, but there are a bunch of companies making more realistic lens flares.
Winston A. Cely
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