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  • Writing with light and trail

    Posted by Joel Grange on June 16, 2006 at 7:55 pm

    Hi everyone! I am trying to create an effect whereas a very bright sparkling light traces a line over a black background and leaves a trail. The trail defines the contour of a machine. Once it has been defined, the line of the machine becomes solid and fills up with the entire machine. To do this I have two layers that were rendered in 3Ds max. One is the animation of the machine with solid on the inside and another is the same animation with the contour of the machine in white line and the rest is black. I was going to use that second layer as the alpha layer but I need to know how to go about creating that effect. Can somone out there help me?

    Dotan Baytman replied 20 years, 2 months ago 3 Members · 3 Replies
  • 3 Replies
  • Mylenium

    June 16, 2006 at 8:20 pm

    Shouldn’t be too difficult… Use your contour as a matte on a gradient layer in a subcomp, then use Gradient Wipe in the main comp to reveal it. By using your pre-comped layer multiple times and adjusting its values (e.g. contrast/ brightness) you can isolate parts of the greyscale to form a glowing head as you need it. It’s al ljust a matter of finding the right balance between effects. If it’s an option, you could also ask the 3D guy for a depth pass. This will give more coherent gradation and thus make for instance the intensity of the glow as it fades in the depth of the image more believable and can also be used to add other effects like some minor DOF.

    Mylenium

    [Pour Myl

  • Joel Grange

    June 17, 2006 at 3:58 am

    Brilliant Mylenium!!! This works great and opens the door to a lot. Honestly, the way I was going to go about this was going to take me hours of work. Thanks a LOT!

    Joel

  • Dotan Baytman

    June 18, 2006 at 7:57 am

    Can yop post your finall result?

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