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FIGURE 49.20

Green arrow buttons in the Lens Effects Flare dialog box identify the parameters that can be animated for this effect.

Each Lens Effects dialog box also includes a preview pane in the upper-left corner with three buttons underneath. Clicking the Preview button renders all enabled lens effects in the preview pane. The VP Queue button renders the current Video Post queue. Using the preview pane, you can get an idea of how the final output should look. With the Preview button enabled, any parameter changes in the dialog box are automatically updated in the preview pane. The Update button enables you to manually update the preview. You can right-click the Preview pane to change its resolution for faster updates at lower resolutions.

Tip

If the VP Queue button is enabled, then a default Lens Effects image is displayed. Using this image, you can play around with the various settings while the Preview mode is enabled to gain an idea of what the various settings do. •

You can save the settings in each Lens Effect dialog box as a separate file that can be recalled at any time. These saved files have an .lzf extension and can be saved and loaded with the Save and Load buttons at the bottom left of the dialog box.

Adding flares

The Lens Effects Flare dialog box includes controls for adding flares of various types to an image. This dialog box includes a main preview pane and several smaller preview panes for each individual effect. The check boxes below these smaller preview panes let you enable or disable these smaller panes.

Under the main preview pane are several global commands, and to their right is a series of tabbed panels that contain the settings for each individual effect type. The first panel is labeled Prefs and sets which effects are rendered (on and off scene), which are squeezed, which have the Inferno noise filter applied, and which have an Occlusion setting.

The settings for the individual flare types are included in the subsequent tabbed panels. They include Glow, Ring, A Sec, M Sec, Rays, Star, Streak, and Inferno. These tabbed panels include gradient color bars for defining the Radial Color, Radial Transparency, Circular Color, Circular Transparency, and Radial Size. Each of these tabbed panels has different settings, but Figure 49.21 shows the tabbed panels for the Glow and Ring effects.

FIGURE 49.21

The Glow and Ring tabbed panels are representative of all the different lens effect settings.

The gradient colors found in these tabbed panels are controlled by flags that appear under the gradient band. Double-clicking a flag opens a Color Selector dialog box where you can select a new color. Dragging these flags moves the gradient color. You can add a new flag to the band by clicking under the gradient away from the existing flags. The active flag is colored green. To delete flags, select them and press the Delete key. By right-clicking the gradient band, you can access a pop-up menu of options that let you access several options for the selected gradient color. You can even load and save gradients. Gradients are saved as files with the .dgr extension.

The rightmost tabbed panel, shown in Figure 49.22, is labeled Inferno and provides a way to add noise to any of the effects. The Prefs tabbed panel includes a check box for enabling the Inferno settings for each effect. Inferno noise can be set to three different states: Gaseous, Fiery, and Electric. If your effect is looking too perfect, you can add some randomness to it with the Inferno option.

FIGURE 49.22

The Inferno tabbed panel includes options for enabling noise for the various flare effects.

Adding focus

The Lens Effects Focus dialog box, shown in Figure 49.23, includes options for adding Scene Blur, Radial Blur, and Focal Node effects. If you click the Select button, the Select Focal Object dialog box opens and lets you choose an object to act as the focal point for the scene.

You can also set values for the Horizontal Focal Loss and Vertical Focal Loss or enable the Lock button to lock these two parameters