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bringing the northern lights to life
hi guys
wondering if anyone could give me any pointers for this project. it’s for a background for a flash site which is currently a flat image of northern lights-like stuff on a light background. very pretty. we want to make little bits of it animate now and then, glow and pulsate a little i guess, and i’ve been trying some stuff in AE but it doesn’t look too good! have been using the fractal noise on the orb preset and masking an area to apply it too, feathering the mask to make it soft and adding it on a soft light layer over the image. looks ok-ish but when i export it without the bg image i get a dark halo around it for some reason and it looks nasty when i stick it on top in flash… can anyone help??
thanks 🙂
emma. -
2 Replies
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Depends entirely on your perception of the Aurora. Most people have never seen it in action so they have only a vague idea of what’s going on. Do you need multiple layers that appear to have 3D presence or is this a flat simulation?
Any of the many light stroke tutorials should give you the starting points you need. I think there’s one or two here on the cow that help recreate last year’s Sprint commercials.
You can also simply draw a curvey line and apply a vertical-only Gaussian blur to it. Adding the line back in as a copy of the layer and maybe using CC Light burst and the under-used Light Wipe can add superb reality enhancements.
bogiesan
This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”
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those sound like some great pointers, thanks so much! i think the wavy line with blur and some light effects could be just what i’m looking for – thanks again!
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