HELP! Need “light rays” tutorial w/o plug-in

[Tim Kurkoski]

AE 6.5 Pro comes with a set of plug-ins from Cycore. They’re on the CD, you have to install them separately. The Light Wipe and Light Burst effects may help you achieve the look you want, though it’s not as good as Trapcode Shine.

I think I’ve also seen tutorials on how to do this type of thing. You might want to do a Google search and see what you find.

[Rocket Surgery]

After Effects came pre-installed on both of my Apple computers that I purchased slightly used, so I do not have the disks…

This forum was my last resort after spending hours trying to Google up a pre-existing tutorial…

And this is twice now that this site has moved one of my posts from the “Cow” to the “Calf.” I mentioned this to a Creative Cow rep at the DV Expo recently, and was told that was an error. Apparently not. I’m sorry my AE troubles don’t seem to rate a posting on the full Cow, but I figured I would get more experienced help there. Here on the Calf, the best one can apparently hope for is being told to buy a plug-in or Google for answers elsewhere.

If this is such a common effect, then I fail to understand why there aren’t dozens of tutorials covering it; or why nobody on this site seems to know how to do it without a plug-in.

[David Frisk]

Whoa, slow down there. He made a suggestion about using plug-ins that come with AE 6.5 Pro (which is what you said you had). How was he supposed to know you don’t have the discs and therefore not the plug-ins to accomplish it?

Secondly, sometimes in order to do something you just need to have a plug in for it, and there’s no way around it. If you’ve already spent a couple hours looking for this effect with no plug-in, that may hint to you that nobody’s got one made (or knows how to do it, or can’t be done). People here aren’t going to type up a 5 page tutorial for you, especially if they don’t know how or can’t accomplish something without a particular plug-in.

You’ll find this place is extremely useful and people here are incredibly nice to take the time to help out others…but you need to cut out the attitude or else you’ll find yourself getting no help at all when you need it.

[Rocket Surgery]

Well, not wishing to get into any flame war, but my original post did make it clear I was looking to learn the effect “the hard way” without using a plug-in, so the initial reply was not really as helpful as you claim, even if he didn’t know I don’t have the disks.

And regarding your claim that this site is very helpful, I have to say it has not been so in my experience. This is my second post requesting help from the “experts” regarding problems I’ve encountered with AE. My first post was deemed unworthy of the full Cow forum, and moved here to the Calf site, where it received a whopping ZERO responses. I did not say anything then, but did mention to the Cow rep at DV Expo that I was disappointed in the lack of responses at the Calf site, and wished he’d have left my post where I placed it. He assured me that was a fluke and I should try again.

So here I have tried again, and again my request for help is seemingly as unworthy as the first request, and bumped downstairs here to the Calf site. No experts in sight; just a suggestion about a different plug-in after I’d made it clear I wasn’t interested in plug-ins; and the universal “google it” advice one gives someone when they really don’t care to spend any actual thought or time “helping” another with actual knowlege and experience.

There was ZERO attitude in my two original posts requesting help, and I received ZERO help. Therefore I don’t see how adding attitude to a post complaining about the absence of the nice, experienced, and helpful people you claim to exist here is going to do me much harm.

As always, however, there is never any shortage of “attitude police” on these web forums, who are more than willing to donate their valuable time whenever the opportunity arises to wag their fingers at anyone who introduces any negativity whatsoever into a discussion — justified or not — rather than offer up an actual solution to the problem.

So, to sum up: I’ve posted 2 different AE help requests to Creative Cow. Both posts never appeared there and were bumped down to the Calf site. My first post received ZERO responses; my second just the one that was not much help at all, and then your much appreciated scolding after I expressed my dissatisfaction. I can only conclude that from my experience, this site is far from being very helpful at all.

The people who run this site can either act upon that fact or not. I doubt I will bother anymore with this site next time I seek help from the “experts.” So silly of me to try and actually improve my AE skills and knowledge rather than rely on a plug-in to do the work for me. In fact, I should just subcontract the entire job to an editor who has the plug-in as that would be the easiest way, then I won’t have to do any work at all. In fact, I should just toss the whole program out the window and become an agent for other editors. Learn the program myself? What a folly!

[David Frisk]

Do you think that maybe people haven’t helped you the whole two times you posted because you were asking the impossible, or at least asking for something that nobody on here could possibly figure out? I don’t think you understand the fact that sometimes a plug-in is REQUIRED. You can’t just pull stuff out of thin air. For all you know, you could be doing the equivalent of asking how to move an object from left to right across the screen without using keyframes or any position properties…you have to have certain things!!! If you can search the internet for hours and not find anything on the subject, doesn’t that clue you in to the fact that maybe what you’re looking for isn’t possible, or at least could be so incredibly complicated that it’s not worth the time, or that maybe nobody knows a possible way to do it? You shouldn’t expect that everyone on this site knows absolutely everything there is to know and can do anything you want them to just because you ask. Obviously the suggestion that was given was the best that could be done. You didn’t want to pay for an expensive plug-in, so a free plug-in was suggested that comes with AE.

And as for me being the “manner police” or whatever you want to call me, say what you will. I’m just saying that this place is very useful and when you need help that someone here could actually assist you with (as opposed to something that just might not be possible), you’re not going to get much help. If you don’t care because you don’t think this place will ever be useful, then I’d say the thousands of posts on here before yours say otherwise. These people aren’t getting paid by you or the site. Maybe if you were paying to post here and didn’t get any help, then you could be upset. But you seem to not realize that nobody on here owes you anything, and that they help if they can because they’re just nice people. If you’re going to get upset with every other post you make because someone can’t assist you, then perhaps you should take your “business” elsewhere.

[Rocket Surgery]

You’d have a good point there if it were true. However, the fact that you suggest it might be “impossible” demonstrates to me that you have even less knowledge of AE than myself, and that’s hard to do.

My original post that got zero responses had to do with playing audio files within AE. From my textbooks, it was clear that the program should play audio, but mine was not. I asked for help at Creative Cow. I received none. I tried other avenues and finally found the solution, which turned out to be a simple switch in a hard-to-locate dialog box. Problem solved, no thanks to this site. Simple to solve by anyone with a year or two experience on the software. Nobody here seemed to know nor care enough to reply.

My current post refers to an effect that has been around for quite some time. I’ve read some opinions that say light ray effects are as common in motion graphics as drop shadow is in Photoshop. I’ve googled and searched dozens of AE sites for a tutorial on how to do this effect prior to the “Shine” plug-in that so many endorse. I’ve found posts from other novices who also seek this knowledge, and while the majority of replies are lazy, “just get the plug-in” responses, some actually refer vaguely to the “old fashioned way” of doing the effect, yet none will explain it. There is the odd reference to “motion blur” or “radial blur” and adding a mask layer and animating a light, but so far not one simple tutorial explaining how it’s done sans plug-in; just references that it can be done.

So, your suggestion that the effect is “impossible” without a plug-in only displays your own ignorance of the software. I’ve already learned that it’s possible; now I’m simply trying to find out the steps. I don’t know the experience level of the so-called “experts” that hover around this novice site, but if they don’t know how to do this supposedly “standard” text effect, then I would suggest they aren’t all that experienced, and perhaps whoever bumped my post down here to AE kindergarten should have left it on the Cow forum where I posted it in the first place so that some real experts might have a chance to respond.

As for having a right to be upset, I’m not upset. I’m expressing a valid negative opinion of the usefulness of this site based upon my two experiences here. Perhaps you need a class in web commerce before suggesting I take my “business” elsewhere. The operators of this site did not create it solely out of their desire to share knowledge with others. They created it in the hopes that it would attract enough hits to give the site value as an advertising venue. That’s the bottom line reason for most every website in existence. Therefore it behooves the operators of this site to keep people coming back again and again. And since the main attraction of this site is supposed to be information and knowledge sharing amongst users of software such as AE, etc, then it’s NOT very good policy to allow visitors who come seeking knowledge to go away unsatisfied.

Because of my now two unsatisfactory yet very answerable questions I’ve posted here, it’s doubtful I will return a third time to this site seeking help on my AE issues. There should be AE experts monitoring all posts ensuring that posters receive the help they need if nobody else steps up just to that poster feels the site continues to have value to him. That keeps me coming back, makes me more expert at the software, and I’m more likely to help someone else down the line when they come seeking answers that I just happen to have. This results in increased site traffic, making the site more profitable because it can charge more to advertisers. Not to mention the bad word of mouth this site will now receive from me. Instead of me referring editors TO this site for help, I’ll steer them away, telling them their posts will be reposted at a novice site that nobody seems to look at much, and when they do, they don’t have very expert advice on the software.

This is really for the site operators to ponder on. I don’t really expect you to grasp anything this complex, Sandman. To date, I’ve received nothing of value from this site, and have zero inclination to give anything back in return, including my presence here, which, as I’ve now explained to you, is the whole reason the site exists in the first place.

[David Frisk]

I think it’s funny that you can’t see why the people on here are considered professionals in AE because they can’t answer your two simple little questions. Then I ask you this, how are they able to answer the literally thousands upon thousands of questions that get posted here? I guess if they don’t answer yours, they must know nothing, huh?

See, your problem is that you don’t know how things work here. People don’t bother answering questions here that have been answered many, many, many times before. I looked up your first post here, and it was one that has been answered on this very site numerous times. You complain about people giving you “lazy” answers, yet you seem to be the one too lazy to look through the archives here. Go ahead and actually look through some of these posts, and you’ll see that people often say the exact words, “look it up in the archives, as this has been answered numerous times.” People here aren’t so lazy as they are tired of people filling up the boards with the same questions over and over, as people would rather someone spoon feed them answers because they don’t want to take 10 minutes to do the searching.

It’s kind of weird the way you assume I know nothing about AE. Trust me, I know plenty. I by no means am an expert, and by no means claim to be. Do you see my name at the top of one of these pages? No. So why are you acting as though I’m claiming to be some huge professional…so you can act all high and mighty all you want, but it doesn’t bother me any. I’m just another guy here that surfs the boards and gets help when needed, and gives a little help when I can. So the fact that I don’t know what other “Shine” techniques there are doesn’t phase me a bit.

I don’t understand why you take this all personally, as though the people on here were ignoring just your posts on purpose or something. Guess what, not every single post on here gets answered. If someone isn’t around at the time to answer, or someone doesn’t know the answer, what do you expect to happen? I honestly would like to know what you think should happen. Should the answer just appear out of nowhere? And if you hung around here for more than your total of two posts, you would notice that when someone asks a question and it gets answered unsatisfactorily, the person usually thanks the person for taking the time to respond (gasp!) and then clarifies things a little more to what exactly they are looking for or lets them know that they need a little more info then what they were given. And guess what? 99% of the time the people here are more than willing to help further and try to come up with something else to help. Of course you wouldn’t know this because instead of trying to explain your case further, you get angry because you seem to have wasted all your precious times with the TWO whole posts you’ve posted before! You seem like a person with very little patience, which leads me to think that perhaps this isn’t even the program for you in the first place.

But whatever. I’m not really sure why you’re still here and responding to me since you didn’t plan on coming here anymore. The people here who are actually industry leaders and work on national tv spots and everything else aren’t educated on AE enough for you, so good luck with your information hunt. I hope the next person answers your question exactly the way you want it on the first try.

[Todd Gillespie]

Hi Sandman,
You are a scholar and a gentelman and much more patince than I.

BTW: to get the Shine look w/ out the plug-in (at least with text) you can do a radial blur-zoom, duplicate the effect. Add text layer on top with out any effect. Done.
I DID NOT know how to do this, but took the clue about radial blur and figure it out. Something that SOMEPEOPLE should take a hint from.

Todd at UCSB
Television Production

[Ryan Hill]

Yeah. Radial blur will do a decent job. Duplicate the layer, make it 3D, shine a spot light on it, apply radial blur and change the mode to “add” or “lighten.” Animate the light and the centre of the radial blur so they match up, maybe sync them with an expression.

Or something like that. Play around with it until you get something that looks decent. You might need to pre-comp the layer somewhere in there, maybe between the light and the radial blur. Maybe apply a find-edges filter and play around with the levels. Fractal noise could make the light more tendrilly.

There, that’s my off-the-top-of-my-head tutorial. I was going to post something like this before, but I couldn’t remember the name of “radial blur.”

[Graham Quince]

I know its frustrating if someone doesn’t answer your posts. For me, its either because I don’t have a lot of time to give a detailed post or because I don’t know the answer. In those cases, I prefer not to reply, in case another poster sees you’ve been responded to and doesn’t read your original.

Regarding creating light rays without a plugin. In the early days of AE, Brain Maffitt created this tutorial to do exactly what you’re looking for.

Serge Hamad also wrote this tutorial for the cow on parenting. In it, he creates a beam of light.

Hope these help.

Graham

http://www.qcit.com