Lens flare effect

[fae_alba]

Well I'm back again. I've been coding like a mad man on my startup company and am finally on the downslope side of development. So now it is time to start turning my attention to promotion. For that I am working on a quick video meant to be a teaser of the company and product. The final scene is the logo (attached) which of course was modeled in AM. What I envisioned is the model on a black background, say 2 seconds, ending with a lens flare, or some sort of flash from the top right edge of the sun. I tried with simply lights, and couldn't get what I was looking for. Anyone have ideas on how to pull this off?

solus_logo.mdl

[fae_alba]

here's a quick render so far and the project file

demo1.prj

[robcat2075]

Hi Paul,

Good looking logo!

Put the light in the scene where you want the flare to appear, pointing to the camera. I have put it slightly in front of the logo so it won't illuminate the logo.

"Lens Flare" must be turned on in the original copy of the light in the objects folder, but the parameters can be set and animated in the Chor.

 

demo1x.prj

[fae_alba]

Robert, thanks for the tips. I knew if I came out to the forum, the A:M AI would kick in and provide a solution, When the demo reel is done I will share it here

 

[fae_alba]

works like a charm

[fae_alba]

Would there be an easy path to render this with a transparant background to be used as a gif I wonder?

 

[fae_alba]

56 minutes ago, fae_alba said:

Would there be an easy path to render this with a transparant background to be used as a gif I wonder?

 

Found the camera settings, but also found that the lens flare on a transparant background gets lost....

[robcat2075]

Does the background need to be transparent?

Can it be a patch that is background-colored?

GIF only supports all-or-nothing transparency so a partial transparency effect like the lens flare, that partially colors whatever it overlaps, is not possible in GIF.

[Ganthofer]

APNG or maybe WEBP (haven't tried that format) work with transparency, so depending on where it's going to be used/viewed, might be options.

[Ganthofer]

here is frame 29 made into a png and webp. png and  webp image both display in Edge with transparency. I tried Chrome and FireFox, but they didn't appear to have any transparency, although it's the first time I used those 2 browsers, so it could be a setting.

It took me a little time to figure out how to manipulate the TGA's in Gimp to get transparency to show the Lens flare, as none of the images I could get from A:M had a alpha that showed the lense flare, only a B/W of the solid geometry (patches and splines). maybe I'm missing the setting somewhere that will create it. Tried enabling the output buffers, even for the lights (since it's configured on a light), but didn't find anyting.

I have to see if I can write a script for Gimp to process the folder of images. Kind of tedious to do it frame by frame.

 

untitled29_y.webp

[fae_alba]

gimp and animated gifs felt like more work than it was worth. As a temporary fix I left the black background in place, since this is a wip for a web app landing page. The product demos I can render off as an avi and since the demo itself is against a black background it wont matter.