SpeedSix.Flare   (Discreet Box1)



PURPOSE

Uses a variety of tricks for mimicking the appearance of bright lights in a scene viewed by eye or by a camera. Ideally it requires as input a light map which has pixels set to the colour of lights (i.e. it contains only the light emitting surfaces in a scene).

flarea.jpg flareb.jpg



INPUT CLIPS

 1: Light Map : Using this clip flares will be created for every pixel at the chosen intensity level. Select judiciously.
 2: Background : The flares will be drawn on this clip.



ROI   CONTROL PAGE

Light Map Only  (Checkbox  Default: On)
On: When starting to use this effect Light Map Only is always On. This displays pixels within the bounding box and within the Low and High range you can see very quickly which pixels will be used for the flare generation.
Off: Use when you have found the pixels you want for the full flare effect. Be prepared for a wait if your chosen area is densely packed!

Match Scales  (Checkbox  Default: On)
     Match Scales

Scale X  (Number  Min: 0.01, Max: 2.00, Default: 0.20)
Centre  (Position  Default: 0.2,0.3)

Scale Y  (Number  Min: 0.01, Max: 2.00, Default: 0.20)
     Delimits the bounding box. Only pixels within the box will be considered for flares.

Low  (Colour Box  Default: R: 58982, G: 58982, B: 58982, A: 0)
Low Light  (Number  Min: 0.000, Max: 100.000, Default: 90.0)
High Light  (Number  Min: 0.000, Max: 100.000, Default: 100.000)
High  (Colour Box  Default: R: 65535, G: 65535, B: 65535, A: 0)
     Use to bound the intensity levels to consider when creating the flares.



Flares   CONTROL PAGE

Aperture (mm)  (Number  Min: 0.1, Max: 20.1, Default: 4.0)
     Controls the diameter of lens or eye pupil aperture. The smaller this is, the wider the 'rainbow' halo diffraction effect will be.

Halo Fringes  (Number  Min: 0, Max: 100, Default: 100)
     This controls the number of radial lines eating in to the central halo. It is combined with random weightings to give the final effect. In the eye, the central brightest part of a light source image often looks as if it has been 'eaten into' by radial lines, so it's no longer symmetrical and smooth (even when the original light source is). This is due mainly to inconsistencies in the material of the eye. It doesn't happen with artificial lenses.

HaloStrength  (Number  Min: 0.1, Max: 100.0, Default: 50.0)
     Adjusts the relative importance of the halo effect.

Halo FrnStr  (Number  Min: 0.0, Max: 100.0, Default: 50.0)
     Controls how much (on average) each radial line halo fringe eats in to the central halo.

Contrast  (Number  Min: 0.50, Max: 300.00, Default: 135.0)
     Controls the overall contrast of the combined flare effects before they are composited over the background image. Can usually be left at the default, or perhaps lowered to make the effect more subtle.

Streaks  (Number  Min: 0, Max: 1000, Default: 2)
     Specifies the number of streaks to use. These are centred on the light source and are somewhat random in orientation and length (but consistent from frame to frame throughout a sequence!).

Mono Streak  (Number  Min: 0.0, Max: 100.00, Default: 5.0)
     Increases or reduces the colour content of the streaks.

Streak Length  (Number  Min: 0, Max: 1000, Default: 75)
     Sets the maximum streak length. They can be up to 50% shorter.

Streak Rot  (Number  Min: 0.0, Max: 360.0, Default: 0.0)
     Animating this will give some of the effects seen in streaks when the observer moves.

Streak Strength  (Number  Min: 0.1, Max: 100.0, Default: 10.0)
     Adjusts the relative importance of the streak effect.

Glow Radius  (Number  Min: 1.0, Max: 200.0, Default: 10.0)
     Controls the radius of the glow effect around each pixel in the light map. These separate glow effects add up to form the overall glow around an extended light source.

Glow Strength  (Number  Min: 0.1, Max: 100.0, Default: 40.0)
     Adjusts the relative importance of the glow effect.

Reflections  (Number  Min: 0, Max: 10, Default: 0)
     Controls how many times a light source is reflected. In reality, this depends on the number of surfaces (e.g. lens elements) there are in the path of the light.

Reflectivity  (Number  Min: 0.0, Max: 100.0, Default: 20.0)
     How much of the light source intensity is reflected at each reflecting surface.

Refl Scale  (Number  Min: 10.0, Max: 1000.0, Default: 100.0)
     How reflected positions of lights are scaled about the center of the image. The reflecting surfaces are treated as a set of evenly spaced parallel plates. Animating this control can add a bit more interest.

Index