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How could I replicate the Glow.aex in a script?
I would like to replicate “exactly the same algorithm” used in Glow.aex. Is there a way for me to kind of “decompile” the script? I wanna know all the steps to obtain the final composition.
Thank you so much. -
7 Replies
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You might want to move that to the AE Expressions forum – that’s where all things expressiony and scripty live.
But I suspect the answer will be along the lines of “unless you are very experienced at programming in C or Javascript, then it’s not going to happen”. I could be wrong!
– Paul
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You might want to move that to the AE Expressions forum – that’s where all things expressiony and scripty live.
But I suspect the answer will be along the lines of “unless you are very experienced at programming in C or Javascript, then it’s not going to happen”. I could be wrong!
But there are almost certainly ways you could apply the glow effect via a script.
– Paul
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thanks. I will try! 😉
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[Wagner Patriota] “I would like to replicate “exactly the same algorithm” used in Glow.aex. Is there a way for me to kind of “decompile” the script? I wanna know all the steps to obtain the final composition. Thank you so much.”
Effects and scripts are totally different. Effects do image processing; scripts control the application.
While some of its controls are pretty straightforward, Glow is deceptively complex — did you know you can create arbitrary maps for the color loops by using the Curves effect and saving that out to disk, then loading it back into Glow?
What are you ultimately trying to accomplish here?
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
When I say ‘replicate “exactly the same algorithm” used in Glow.aex”‘ I mean that I will code a program [C++] that will do the same thing. But totally without After Effects… I am working with image processing in this case.
Thank you so much! -
[Wagner Patriota] “When I say ‘replicate “exactly the same algorithm” used in Glow.aex”‘ I mean that I will code a program [C++] that will do the same thing. But totally without After Effects… I am working with image processing in this case. Thank you so much!”
Gotcha.
I think the most straight-forward approach is to reverse-engineer the effect: built some synthetic images and study how changing parameters of Glow yields different outputs.
The most basic glow uses a threshold value for brightness to isolate the areas that will be glowed. Everything above this threshold is blurred, then added back onto the original image.
Ae’s Glow effect is a little more complicated. Here’s my guess at how it works:
First, after applying a threshold to the image, it seems to blur the selected channels. This yields a gradient which is remapped with the glow gradient. The glow gradient is composited according to the glow operation selection, and the original image is composited according to the composite original selection.
Radius is the radius of the blur; intensity is some kind of gain function applied to the blurred channels before remapping. Glow colors, color looping, phase, midpoint, etc. all create the glow gradient.
This may not be exactly how it all works, but I think it should get you started!
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
thanks… I will try! 😉
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