Global Lens Flare Synopsis: This FX emmulates the artifacting that occurs when a bright light reflects around inside of a real-world camera lens. This artifacting is affected by imperfections in the lenses, the shape of the camera's iris, and by the different coatings on the lenses. Requester: Halo Around Light Sources : This flag lets the effect put a fuzzy halo around the light in the image. The size of the halo is set by the light's Z axis size. This emulates the imperfections or dirt/fog on the first lens of the camera. Number of Round Lenses : This sets the number of round shaped flares that will be created by each light (although, all the flares may not be visable because they are being cast outside of the film plane). This flare is what would be caused by a camera with a perfect iris. There are some cameras that have enough parts in them that they approach a nearly circular iris. Number of Octagonal Lenses : This sets the number of octagon shaped flares that will be created by each light (although, all the flares may not be visable because they are being cast outside of the film plane). Octagon shaped flares are created by cameras with octagonal iris'. Min/Max Flare Intensity (0..1) : These parameters set the the range of intensities for the flares. An intensity of 1.0 means that the imagine will be totally occluded by the flare. Min/Max Flare Size (0..1) : These parameters set the range of sizes for the flares. The numbers represent the flare size as a fraction of the image width. Flare Spacing Adjustment : This parameter adjusts how close to the center of the image the flares will be packed (sort of a position control). Fraction w/o Edges (0..1) : In a real camera, the complex of lenses often consists of both concave and convex lenses. The idea is that convex lenses create flares with "hotter" (more intense) centers, and that concave lenses have hotter edges (I may have these turned around, but the idea is the same). Flares w/o Edges are flare with hot centers and flares with edges are flares with hot edges. The intensities themselves come from the ranges allowed by the Min/Max Flare Intensity parameters. Random Number Seed : This seed value allows you to effectively change lenses without having to change all the other parameters you've set up. Restrict to far/near side of center : These flags are used to say, "I only want lens flares to show up between the lightsource and the center of the screen." Some lenses appear to do this, so these flags let you control it. Things to keep in mind to get the most out of this FX: Lights that are behind the camera will not flare. Lights will flare when they are beyond the field of view of the camera, but once they are behind the camera, there is no way they could cast light directly into a lens and therefore, stop flaring. A real camera has an iris with only one shape to it. The flares take on the shape of the iris, so using both round and octagonal flare together may look "fakey" to a purist. If you're shooting for photo realism with lens flare, stick to just round or just octagonal lenses. The lens flares that occur in real cameras tend to be much smaller the the default values in this FX. These defaults in this FX are set up so that the flares can be easily spotted while testing. Some lenses do give very large flares, but you may want to make the effect a bit subtler by making them smaller and less intense. The size, position, and color of the lens flares is only is only barely controllable by the user. You are able to set limits on the size and intensities of the flares, you are able to control how tightly packed the flares are and where they are with reference to the center of the image, and you can approximately control the colors of the flares by using colored light sources. All the specifics about what each individual flare looks like is determined randomly within the FX, and the only control you've got is by changing the random number. When a photographer purposly wants to use flare for dramatic effect, the only control he/she has over the look of the flares is done with filters and by changing whole lenses. By changing the random number, you are effectively changing to a new lens that may have the coatings and lens types you need to get just the right effect. ================================== Global Haze Synopsis: This FX will key off of a specific color in an image and blend that color outward from wherever is is found. The idea is that bright objects can be given an apparent glow or halo by telling the FX to look for the color of the bright object. The Start and End values in this FX allow it to animate, so you can make something flare up during an animation. The speed of this FX is very dependant upon image size and upon the radii set in the requester. It will slow way down if you choose to have large radii on a big image. Requester: Start/End Haze Radius : This sets how far the halo emminates from the edges of the key color it picks up. The radius is measured in pixels, but more specifically, it is actually measured in pixel widths (this may be important to those using output devices with eccentric aspect ratios). The Start/End values let you animate the radius size during the progress of the animation. Start/End Haze Intensity : This sets the maximum intensity that the halo will have in pixels adjacent to the key colored pixels. The Start/End values let you animate the intensity during the progress of the animation. Haze Key Color Red/Green/Blue : These are the Red, Green, and Blue color gun values that the effect will look for and haze outwards from. Things to keep in mind to get the most out of this FX: The radii of the haze in this effect is measured in pixels - not image size. It is not resolution independant, and will not look the same on two different size images unless you change the radius of the FX in the new image. If you get an effect you like, and do another picture that is twice as wide (in pixels), you have to make the Start/End radii twice as big as you did to get the same effect you did in your first image. The effect keys specifically off of the color in the Red/Green/Blue parameters. On the edges of objects, pixels are antialiased and the FX may not exactly pick up the outer edge of the bright object you're lookin for. This is more noticable in lower resolution images and if objects get very small.