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Activity Forums Adobe After Effects Optical Flares not tracking lights, not responding to foreground layers.

  • Optical Flares not tracking lights, not responding to foreground layers.

    Posted by Simon Ross on October 28, 2016 at 12:59 pm

    Hello,

    I’m having a problem with something I’ve done successfully in the past, and I have no idea why I can’t make it work this time.

    I’m trying to track optical flares to lights in AE, but whenever I select “track lights” in the OF panel, the light source of the flare does not appear on the light as in the past, but somewhere beside it. See the comparison against OF official tutorial, when their clicking “track lights” results in the flare source translating directly onto their lights >>

    Their set-up >>

    What happens in my set-up >>

    As you can see, my flare source has appeared way off to the left.

    As a result (I’m guessing) I cannot make foreground layer occlusion work either, in order to make the lights blink off behind layers… That’s the issue with not having an accurate translation. I’ve tried lot’s of different things, setting up a variety of scenes to make the it work, but somehow the light seems to define the centre of the whole effect, rather than it’s source.

    I’m working on a new machine at work and have just installed OF. I’ve opened an old project and the flare source is still on the light, so I don’t know why I can’t make it work now.

    Any help appreciated. Thanks!

    Daniel Waldron replied 9 years, 10 months ago 3 Members · 2 Replies
  • 2 Replies
  • Michael Szalapski

    October 28, 2016 at 4:29 pm

    Make sure the size of your OF is the size of the composition. Make sure it is a 2d layer. Be sure to reset all of your transform properties so that there is no scaling, position, or rotation on the OF layer.

    – The Great Szalam
    (The \’Great\’ stands for \’Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble\’)

    No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

  • Daniel Waldron

    October 28, 2016 at 4:54 pm

    Are your lights named correctly? Optical Flares allows you to choose which lights are used depending on the name of your lights.

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