New in 1.03:
New in 1.02:
New in 1.01:
On Nuke: click on the GenArts Sapphire icon in the toolbar on the left-hand side of the screen. Select the desired Sapphire effects category, and click on an effect to add it to your project. Alternatively, you can right-click anywhere the Node Graph window and go to Sapphire -> Sapphire Category Name -> Effect Name in the context menu.
On Toxik: press the ~ key to open the Gate, and swipe right to Tools & Views. All the Sapphire effect categories such as "OFX S.Adjust", "OFX S.Blur+Sharpen", etc. should appear in the menu. Select the desired category and then drag an effect into your Composition window to add it.
On Fusion: in the Tools menu, select Sapphire and the desired Sapphire effects category, then click on an effect to add it to your Composition. Alternatively, you can right-click directly in the Comp Window and select Add Tool -> Sapphire -> Sapphire Category Name -> Effect Name.
On Baselight: using the Insert Menu, select the OFX Filter menu and select the desired Sapphire effects category. Then click on an effect to apply it to the currently selected clip. Instead of using the OFX Filter menu, you can alternatively use the OFX Transition menu to select amongst only transitions, or the OFX Source menu to select just generators.
On Film Master: select a clip in the timeline, and using the Effect menu on the right side of the timeline window, select the desired Sapphire effects category and effect plug-in. Then press the "Create new user effect" button (which looks like a square with a small 9-square grid overlaid) to apply the effect to the clip. The effects in the Sapphire Transition category can also be applied specially as usual transition effects in Film Master.
On Scratch: click on the "New.." button on the bottom left of the process screen, select the desired plug-in from the list, and then click on "Insert".
On Nuke: right-click on the properties panel and in the Context menu select Reset Knobs to Default. You can also choose Revert Knobs, which will undo all changes since you opened the properties panel.
On Toxik: press the Reset button on the right side of the parameters window.
On Fusion: right-click on the effect icon in the Comp, and choose Settings -> Load Default.
On Baselight: in the Edit menu, click on Reset Parameters.
On Film Master: press the Reset Effect button (which looks like a circle with a red dot in the center and a small white left-pointing triangle on the right).
On Scratch: press the Reset button located on the right side of the screen under the bin. To reset an individual parameter, click on that parameter's value/slider and in the resulting dialog, click on the "R" button.
Online documentation is normally installed along with your software
and can also be accessed directly.
On Windows: go to Start -> All Programs -> GenArts Sapphire OFX ->
Online Help (HTML) or (PDF).
On Mac: go to the
Applications/GenArtsSapphireOFX folder and double click on Online
Help.html or .pdf.
On Linux: go to the RedHat Applications menu and select GenArts
Sapphire OFX -> Sapphire Online Help (HTML) or (PDF).
Glint, Glow, Glare, and Rays, for example, take the main Source input and also an optional Mask input. For these, the source input is multiplied by the mask before generating the glints (or glows, glares), so where the mask is black no glints are generated, and where it is white they are generated as usual. This method prevents the glints or glows themselves from being partially cropped by the mask. In addition these effects use the RGB colors of the Mask input to selectively colorize the resulting glows, glints, or glares. The red areas of the mask will produce red glows, glints, or glares, and so on.
In Blur effects, the areas which are masked out are never blurred, so they do not blur into the masked-in regions. If a mask were instead applied afterward, the pixels behind the mask would be blurred over the edge of the mask and into the final image. As an example, say you have a clip with white text over a black background. If you put that clip into both the Source and Mask inputs of Blur, the black background will not be blurred into the text, since the black pixels are all masked out.
Some OFX host products, such as Toxik and Fusion, have their own native masking inputs on every effect. These inputs simply composite the original source over the normal result where the mask is black. The plug-in doesn't use that input in its processing.
In Fusion, the native masking input is called Effect Mask and it's blue to distinguish it from the Sapphire Mask input, which is white. In Toxik, the native Masking input is always last and is colored black, whereas the Sapphire Mask input is gray like other inputs.
Some OFX host products, such as Nuke and Fusion, represent RGBA images in pre-multiplied format, where the RGB are assumed to be scaled by the opacity. Other hosts such as Toxik, Baselight, and Film Master represent RGBA in non-premultiplied or straight format. Sapphire effects use pre-multiplied format internally, and will automatically convert as needed depending on the host product's format. The Affect Alpha parameter which is available in most lighting effects tends to be less necessary in hosts that use pre-multiplied RGBA format, and it defaults to 0.0 for these hosts, but defaults to 1.0 for hosts that use straight RGBA format.
OFX allows you to adjust the pixel aspect ratio in the Composition Settings menu, and Sapphire Plug-ins read this value to give the appropriately scaled results.
If necessary, you can override the pixel aspect ratio for all Sapphire Plug-ins by changing the value of force_pixel_aspect_ratio in the s_config.text file.
The pixel aspect ratio makes no difference for basic pixel processing effects such as color processing or compositing.
On Mac the config file is:
/Applications/GenArtsSapphireOFX/config/s_config.text
On Windows the config file is:
C:\Program Files\GenArts\SapphireOFX\s_config.text.
On Linux the config file is:
/usr/genarts/SapphireOFX/s_config.text.
Custom Lens Flare types can also be made by editing the s_lensflares.text file, in the same directory as the config file above. New flare types will automatically appear in the menu of the S_LensFlare plug-in.
To Sapphire Plug-ins Introduction
© 2009, GenArts, Inc. All rights reserved.