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Activity Forums Adobe After Effects Make Optical Flares move with cameras

  • Make Optical Flares move with cameras

    Posted by Dean Pickersgill on November 17, 2013 at 6:48 pm

    Optical Flares help please anyone?

    I’ve got a comp featuring simple camera movement, and Im putting an optical flare (just a Glow, actually) onto a picture of a light in the background. Once I line that up nicely so’s it looks like that light is glowing I want to move the camera around. However, the Optical flare stays put in 3d space, meaning it doesn’t move like I expect and ‘stick’ to the background image – unless I physically move it and keyframe the resulting position.

    I’ve tried tracking lights – that just puts the flare somewhere illelevant on the screen, and I’ve tried whipping it to the camera, but nothing seems to make the flare travel with the background image.

    All the other elements in the comp move relative to the camera position, but not the optical flare.
    Anyone point me in the right direction please …?

    Cheers in advance!
    Dean

    Joseph W. bourke replied 12 years, 5 months ago 2 Members · 3 Replies
  • 3 Replies
  • Joseph W. bourke

    November 18, 2013 at 2:41 pm

    Is your Optical Flare on a 3D layer, and is the 3D layer in the same coordinates (especially in Z space) as the layer you want it to look as if it’s locked to? You’ll want to put it as close as possible in Z space (without sharing the same Z coordinate as the “light” you’re emulating – maybe 1 or 2 pixels in front of it. Optical Flares definitely work with 3D layers, so it should work.

    Joe Bourke
    Owner/Creative Director
    Bourke Media
    http://www.bourkemedia.com

  • Dean Pickersgill

    November 21, 2013 at 5:04 pm

    Thanks Joseph – stupid of me of course, and thanks for pointing that out! 😉

    Best regards
    Dean

  • Joseph W. bourke

    November 26, 2013 at 12:19 am

    Dean –

    It’s only stupid if you don’t remember it the next time you need to do it…

    Joe Bourke
    Owner/Creative Director
    Bourke Media
    http://www.bourkemedia.com

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