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Trouble with Starglow for Space Project
Hello creative people of the World!
I’ll try to be as short and precise as possible because I would really love to overcome following problem. The thing is: I have 2 layers in my comp. First one is space Nebula and second (bottom one) are Stars scattered around Nebula. Here are images (including alpha channel of Nebula):
Nebula cloud
Alpha channel of Nebula
StarsSmall black dots you see in Nebula alpha channel are holes that are used to display stars that are in front of Nebula and the one that are blocked (behind Nebula) are not shown. This is needed to be able to rotate camera around Nebula cloud and see proper placement of stars (I don’t like the idea of just putting background environment map behind everything :shrug:). Thus Nebula is first layer in comp and Stars layer are bottom one and it all behaves properly.
However…
When I try to apply Starglow effect on Stars layer it just does not work as I thought/hoped it would. Starglow is shown properly on stars that are outside of alpha channel of top (Nebula) layer and it’s missing from stars that are directly over alpha channel. Or something along those lines…
Here are images of AE Comp:
Basic setup
Starglow applied to bottom layer
Only showing bottom Stars layerSo, how to apply Starglow on Stars layer properly? Something to do with blending modes on both layers? I tried many combinations and failed.
Thank you all in advance!
Edit: Fixed links for images.
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5 Replies
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Since you have exr images, see if making the comp 16 or 32 bits makes a difference.
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Thx for fast reply!
I tried it but unfortunately, changing bpc to 16 or 32 does not solve the issue.
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Your track matte (alpha) is covering up the starglow effect. I got it to work by precomposing the stars on top with an inverted copy of the same matte and applying the Starglow effect to the precomp, as in:
The screen grab seems rather dark, but the effect is there in AE.
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Hello,
In your post you identify the problem with the stars that are over an alpha channel, but your pictures show a different issue.
If you simply can’t see the glow effect applied to all of the stars, try bumping up the brightness of the stars layer with a plugin like curves (below is a screen cap of this).
If you are experiencing a different issue with the layers and alpha, what happens if you precomp the stars layer with the starglow effect applied?
Yehoshua Malachi
HiMalachi.com -
@ Kalle Kannisto
You, Sir, are genius! That did exactly what I wanted to accomplish. Now I need to tweak camera movement and few minor details before putting it all to render.@ Dave LaRonde
Hey Dave! I didn’t mention that Nebula, Stars, Lights etc. are 3ds Max renders. I need to combine stars with other elements in After Effects (or Nuke, hopefully one day) because Nebula is made entirely in Krakatoa. Hope it’s clear now 😀Cheers!
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