Keying and light wrap in AE

[Erik Pontius]

You might check the tutorials section…like this one:

https://library.creativecow.net/articles/dewar_john/light_spill.php

[Darby Edelen]

In my experience, this will generally require at least 4 comps, one for the foreground (keyed) element, one for the background, one for the lightwrap and one for the composite.

Place the background comp in the lightwrap comp, then place 2 copies of the foreground comp above this. Change the blending mode of the lower of the 2 foreground layers to ‘Silhouette Alpha’ and change the blending mode of the upper to ‘Stencil Alpha.’ Now apply a Box Blur to the middle layer (the ‘Silhouette Alpha’ layer) with at least 3 iterations and a radius of your choosing. I usually blur the background a bit as well so that the lightwrap will be more ambient (fewer details).

That’s all the hard work. Next I usually just drop this lightwrap comp above my foreground and background comps in the composite comp and change the mode to ‘Add.’

The benefit of using pre-comps for this workflow is that you can switch out the footage in either the foreground or background pre-comp and everything updates accordingly!

Darby Edelen
Designer
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA

[Darby Edelen]

[Dave LaRonde] “The one drawback is that you can’t use 3D layers & lights”

Just a note, I often use 3D layers (and sometimes lights) with my method. Although it may complicate things slightly depending on your requirements.

Darby Edelen
Designer
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA

[Vince Becquiot]

Thanks guys, this is starting to look very good. Now let’s hope the client doesn’t decide to go with a black background 🙂

Vince