Lightning as light source

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

I second all that Dave said, and ad one more question: do you want the scene to look like it receives light from the lightning and you plan on shooting that after you get some answers, or you have footage that you need to make it look like it’s lit by ligtning?

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Joe Mckinney]

Thanks for the quick replies, guys. I should have mentioned that this is a basic motion graphics piece, so photorealism isn’t a priority. I essentially have a textured background that I’d like to ‘accept lights’, and then use the lightning strike to provide the illumination. I hope this is a little more clear!

[Kevin Camp]

you might try a simple random() or wiggle() expression on the light’s intensity property….

something like random(80,100) would make it flicker, which might be enough to make it seem like the lightning was the light source.

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Michael Szalapski]

I was gonna suggest precomping your lightning effect and putting duplicates of it in your comp with all the layers (except for one) blurred and set to various transfer modes such as Add, Screen and/or Overlay.

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

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