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In my book Plug-in to After Effects: Third Party Plug-in Mastery, I did quite an in-depth look at lens flare plug-ins, but the book is now a year old (gasp!) and, as is the nature of the industry, several new versions of plug-ins have come out since it was published. Lens Flares in After Effects: A Side-by-Side Comparison RGTV Episode 42: An Interview with John Knoll – Part 2 RGTV Episode 42: An Interview with John Knoll – Part 1 Luxology interviewed John Knoll in 2008 in a podcast titled Father of the Lens Flare and Red Giant did two in-depth interviews with him. He developed Knoll Light Factory, which I’ll cover in the next article in this series. On the subject of digital lens flares… care to guess who is credited for inventing them? It’s John Knoll, visual effects supervisor at Industrial Light & Magic. PLUGINS FLAIR AND LENSCARE WINDOWSWe’re talking about digital lens flares and digital lens flare plug-ins can be used to create both lens flares and diffraction effects, as well as mimicking the sun, lights, glowing embers on missiles, reflections off of cockpit windows or glares on the wings of a spaceship. It turns out that the reflections off of cars and glass are technically diffraction artifacts, not lens flares since the light is not going through a lens but reflecting off a shiny object. It can be If you want to get all scientific about it, read the Wikipedia article about Lens Flares. A lens flare is created when sunlight refracts off of a camera lens or even the lens of thehuman eye. The Raging Shrimp sign photo, taken by yours truly in Albuquerque, NM, shows a naturally occurring lens flare. Yes, in the previous paragraph I refer to lens flares as magic, but it’s all science and light. The Science Behind Lens Flares and John Knoll All of the tools that I’ll be covering are capable of making natural looking flares or extremely fake looking flares. PLUGINS FLAIR AND LENSCARE HOW TOI’m here to tell you WHAT options you have, not how to use them stylistically. I say, use them as gratuitously as you want. Even in the 90’s, 3D video games were besmirched with fake looking lens flares. PLUGINS FLAIR AND LENSCARE TVSee Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (or don’t see it!) David Boyd, DP on Firefly, sent back the fancy new lenses which reduced lens flare in exchange for cheaper ones so that he could get an old school 70s tv show look. An obvious example is JJ Abrahms in 8mm and the Star Trek reboot, having crew point flashlights at the camera lens to generate them. As I was doing research for this article it was very apparent that some people feel that they have been overused. There are SO many options, for elements and colors, and you can place them anywhere you like, whether it could occur in nature or not. With CGI lens flares, it’s easy to go overboard. Lens flares can add drama and artistic style to footage. In the old days, photographers tended to avoid lens flares, but that is no longer the case. How often to you stop to really appreciate the magic of a naturally occuring lens flare? I guess this is the geek equivalent of stopping to smell the flowers. No, I wasn’t taking any drugs! I am sure you remember squinting like that as a kid and marveling at how the light broke into stars and lines.Įxamining lens flares you see in daily life can help you build realistic looking flares to add to your film and motion graphics work. As I squinted, the effect was intensified and the arms of the star grew. I was noticing how there was a white starburst, a polygonal ring and a sort of golden line as well as a glow in the center. Last weekend I was at a stop light and zoning, staring at the glare on the back window of the minivan in front of me. Before long I’m noticing lens flares everywhere in my daily life. Maybe it’s the writer in me but I wasn’t satisfied with giving a general overview and I dove really deep. ![]() So, I dove in, pushing the plug-ins to their limits, in some cases. I wanted to create some really good examples too. The plan was to create a few examples like I did in my book, Plug-in to After Effects: Third Party Plug-in Mastery, and go over the pros and cons of several plug-ins. In the past couple of weeks I have been working on an article about lens flares. Take Time to Stop and Squint at The Lens Flares PLUGINS FLAIR AND LENSCARE SERIESMore than you ever wanted to know about Lens Flares! This is the first of a 5 part series and will give an overview of lens flares and the plug-ins that can generate them. ![]()
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