Ive been looking for a way to achieve this effect in Adobe After Effects for a while but Im not quite sure how to do it. I want the edge of the camera lens to flare up when a laser/phaser shot passes by the screen (without third party plug ins preferably).
Would I have to create a solid set to screen and mask out the edge of the camera lens for every frame? Or is there another method?
Thanks in advance,
Toa
Posts
- Add a second lens flare effect (in the same solid or in a separate one), place it a bit offscreen.
- Reveal both lens flare effects' Flare Center coordinates.
- Add a Expression to the offscreen flare's Flare Center: highlight the "Flare Center" term and then Add Expression via the Animate menu.
- And then, using the expression pick whip (the small twirly icon that now appears under the Flare Center coordinates), click and drag the whip onto the main lens flare's Y-Coordinate. Doing so, the offscreen flare's Y-Coordinate will get tied to the main flare's one.
- Do the same with Flare Brightness if you are using that to control main flare intensity, or transparency…
That would provide you with a side flare that is automatically vertically aligned with the main one. I don't know if that would be a real lens behavior, though (possibly it ought to do the inverse?). You could further sophisticate this a lot, and/or further filter it via Levels and so to obtain the degree of burn you want to achieve. Perhaps you could also paint some sort of full frame smooth texture to burn in in order to get that Abrams look, plus some sort of dirty map to use as a mask for the flares, to simulate lens dirt.
There is a commercial lens flare plugin that automates all these details: Video Copilot's Optical Flares. You should check their demo videos, as they'll give you lots of ideas about how to make lens flares more interesting and try to reproduce its features without the plugin.
@juanxer, Ill give those tips a go, thanks
from there, just duplicate the layers and play with the setings