Create a silhouette in a door opening

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

Here’s one way to do it:

Work in 32 bit to get better glows and gradients.
You need to create a multipass effect:
1- build your camera move first and render out the base layer
2- render also just the door (white solid would do)with alpha.
3- render the silhouette the same way
4- composite the two and apply trapcode shine or a similar plugin to the door layer- to obtain the light rays.
5- play with glows to obtain desired effect.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist
Bucharest, Romania
http://www.ennstudio.ro

[Kevin Camp]

you could also create a 3d scene within ae… it would be a pretty simple scene, potentially just a floor, wall with a door cut into it, a light and a camera (and the ball layer).

first create a floor layer. create a new solid, call it floor, make it 3-5 times larger than the comp and pick the color that you want for the floor. then make that layer 3d and set the y rotation to 90.

next make the wall layer. you can make it the same size/color and name it wall. make it 3d and set the y position so that the bottom edge lines up with the floor. then create a mask in the shape of a door and set that mask to ‘subtract’ (rather than the default ‘add’). also, set the wall material property’cast shadows’ to ‘on’.

add a 3d camera and use the camera orbit and position tools to create a camera angle that will show the wall and floor.

add a new light. i’d probably do a point source, then pick your color and make sure shadows are enabled. position it higher than the floor and behind the wall.

you should now get light coming through the door way.

to get the ball to work with the scene, it will need to be on a 3d layer too, so enable that, but set the material property for ‘accepts light’ to ‘off’. also, in layer>transform>auto orient… set it to always face the camera.

now you can animate the center of the sphere (within the sphere controls) to create your bounce, then animate the sphere layer’s z position to move through the door.

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Tim Fast]

Thank you Ted and Kevin for your replies!

2 Ted

32 bits is a good tip! However, I have problems to follow the rest of your answer. Why should I render each element separately? With what effects applied? If I render camera movement first I don’t know how to sync everything else afterwards. I thought that the whole idea to build everything in 3D was to be able to move camera freely inside the composition.

2 Kevin

Thank you for the detailed description! I’d already managed to build the room but your description still have some touches that I didn’t think about.

I have created a mask and a light as you describe but unfortunately it doesn’t really work. I get nice shadows on the floor from both from the ball and from the door opening but the latter is black and thus there is no silhouette in it. All I see is the shadows on the floor.

There is no light spill over the edges of door and the ball. But this can be handled later. First I want to see the the silhouette itself.

Any ideas how I can do it?

[Kevin Camp]

it looks like your floor ends right at the doorway. you’ll want it to continue into the ‘room’ beyond the door.

from this camera angle you’ll probably need another 3d solid/layer to act as a back wall. it will need to be beyond the light and large enough to fill the doorway.

as far as spill… if you are talking about volumetric light (as if you have a spotlight and you want to see the cone of light, like maybe there is some dust/smoke in the air), you’ll need a plugin like trapcode’s lux, or you’ll need to fake it with a translucent solid and a mask, or something like that.

if you wanted something more like light wrap, where a bright light starts engulfing an object, then you could try adding an adjustment layer over the top of everything with the glow effect on it.

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Tim Fast]

Thank you Kevin that you follow up the thread. It’s really helping me a lot. I’ve tried your both suggestions – with a Trapcode plugin (not Lux however but Shine) and a Glow effect.

The result from the Shine plugin is pretty much what I’m looking for:

But it costs money. :-/ The other problem is that when I move the camera, the appearance of the rays changes too. Here is the same effect parameters but with a little higher camera.

And even if the rays are nice I don’t really need them. For me it would be enough if the light just wrapped around the objects. However, I can’t make the Glow effect work. I’ve tried to play with the parameters but nothing works so well. As a result I just increased the radius, all other parameters are untouched. You can see the result here:

As you see the light doesn’t evenly wrap the whole opening. It rather looks coming from a point. Are there any parameters I can change to fix it?

Thanks again for your help!

[Kevin Camp]

adjusting the threshold should start blowing out more of the doorway, so it should start to even out.

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Tim Fast]

Thank you for your reply Kevin. However, I’ve already tried to play with Threshold and it didn’t help. I think the problem is something else. Of some reason the Glow effect affects only the light layer (hence, it looks coming from a single point and not wrapping around the objects) despite that it’s applied to an adjustment layer on the top.

It might help if I clarify how the door is built. It’s a white solid between the light and the rear wall. I also set the light transmission to 100% in the material properties. If I place it as you suggested behind everything (including the light) the door becomes gray with a white spot in the middle (where the point light is).

I realize that it can be difficult to know what the problem is without having access to the project. If you are out of ideas and want just drop the case, no problem. I will understand – you’ve already helped me a lot. I will try to solve it somehow on my own then. But if you do have other ideas what I can check to solve the problem I’d love to hear them. 😉

[Kevin Camp]

the light transmission property is a good idea… however i don’t know why it’s not working with glow…

if your glow adjustment layer is above your doorway layer (the one with light transmission enabled), then it should be effecting that layer too. and if the light transmission is 100, then it should be as white as the light source, so it should have just as much glow…

maybe there is a layer order problem…

your layer order should be something like this (i’m going to take a guess at your layers):

1. glow adjustment layer
2. camera (this could be above glow layer)
3. light (this could be above glow layer)
4. doorway (layer w/ light transmission)
5. sphere
6. back wall (with door cut into it)
7. sidewall 1
8. sidewall 2
9. floor

and all layers are 3d layers (except the glow adjustment layer), right?

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Tim Fast]

That’s exactly how they are ordered:

There are also some other experimental layers that I’ve switched off.

The Glow effect affects probably the white solid (the door opening) but not in a way I would expect. The effect is a bright light spot at the same point where the light projects on it. Instead I expect that all objects (the rear wall and the ball included) would have a glow effect (something like a halo) around them. I guess you have the same expectation since you’ve advised about the effect. But of some reason it doesn’t work like that. :-/

[Kevin Camp]

yep, the adjustment layer should be ‘adjusting’ all layers below it…. is the adjustment layer the full size of the comp? or is there a mask on it, or something that would affect it’s size, scale, etc…?

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW