DV Learning

Learning Criteria

	My tutorial consists of 3D animation.  I will describe how 
  to make a lens flare.(Sort of like a starburst effect.)  These 
  types of effects are known as an ubiquitous lens flare.  The next 
  few steps are the "how-to" way to make a lens flare.
  	A lens flare in actuality is the light bouncing off of a 
  camera lens.  The kind of flare varies in the type of lens 
  used and the anti-coating applied to the lens surface.
	To make a particular lens flare, I recommend you use 
  Adobe After Effects and Knoll Lens Flare Pro.  This equipment is 
  used to prepare a lens flare of your very own to from scratch.
  The next steps are very important to your lens flare:

Set up a 3D-like environment.
Create a target object that the lens flare will track.
Animate the target object.
Render out the 3D environment or background plate.
Render out the the target object as a separate pass.
Render out and alpha matte pass.
Composite all of the passes in After Effects and add the lens flare.

	You can now animate a target object to be tracked later on in 
  After Effects.  We are now ready to begin a process called 
  rendering.
	To begin with, we will start on the background or the plate 
  rendering.  We will have all of our geometry and lights turned on 
  except for our target model.
	Next, we begin the Target pass.  We will have all our geometry 	
  and lights turned off except for the target model when we render.
  Be sure to turn off motion blur from your preferences.
	Finally, we finish with the Alpha Matte pass.  Turn off all 	
  of our light sources.
	When all passes have been rendered import everything into   
  After Effects.
	
	First, add all of your footage to a comp in After Effects.
  Make sure background is on the bottom of the comp.  
	Create a black solid the size of your comp to place above
  the background plate.  Set the transfer mode to solid to Screen.
	Apply the Flare Pro plug-in to the solid layer.
	Create your own flare and then configure your Location Layer
  and Obscuration Layer in the plug-in interface.

	In the interface, set your Location Layer to your rendered
  Target movie.  
	Then, set the Obscuration Layer to the Alpha Matte movie.

	Everything will then finish itself.  And you are now finished 
  with your lens flare.

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