Knoll 3D Flare
By Aharon Rabinowitz
Published on Friday, November 20th, 2009
So you may have caught on twitter that I was playing around with something called Knoll 3D Flare. It’s something being worked on and tested here at Red Giant, based on a project file sent to us in August, by David Vinson, Senior Visual Effects Supervisor at Outpost Pictures.
Basically K3DF is a new set of features to enhance Knoll Light Factory Pro, Hollywood’s go-to lens flare solution.
Currently, the feature set includes:
- 3D Camera Aware: Link a lens flares to a 3D Light’s XYZ position.
- Z-Depth: Distance of flare from camera effects flare’s intensity.
- Color Linking: Light color effects flare color.
- Intensity Linking: Light intensity effects flare’s intensity.
- Multiple Lights: Apply to every light in your comp.
- World Scale: Control the amount of flare scaling relative to a light’s distance from the camera
- Edge Flareup: As flares near the edge of the comp they automatically brighten and flareup replicating natural lens phenomena.
- Full 3D Obscuration: All 3D layers in your composition can be used to obscure the flare. As the 3D light travels behind a layer, the flare dims and goes out.
This is not a final or complete list. It’s just something that’s being worked on with the ultimate goal of making Knoll Light Factory Pro, already an industry standard, even better.
What’s really interesting to note is that Knoll Light Factory Pro has been able to do most of this stuff for years! 3D lens flares and light linking are not new. I’ve been using them for a long time. However it required some knowledge of expressions – which you can easily pick up at Dan Ebbert’s Motion Script.com.
Anyway we’d love to hear your thoughts on these features, and what you might want to see in Knoll. Personally, I’m really impressed with 3D obscuration. Being able to have the flare wink out of existence when it goes behind any 3D layer opens up a lot of possibilities and makes life a lot easier.
Tags: Knoll 3D Flare, Knoll Light Factory Pro
November 21st, 2009 at 11:23 am
A stellar list of enhancements that KLF hase definitely needed. Thanks for the update Aharon. Best, John.
November 21st, 2009 at 2:26 pm
Is this gonna be competing against optical flare?? I´ll wait and see, wich one is better…
November 21st, 2009 at 11:18 pm
You mean is Optical Flare going to be competing against Knoll Light Factory. Of course it is. But Optical Flare is being coded by hired guns and KLF has an entire company behind it. Which will you trust more?
November 23rd, 2009 at 1:31 am
When we can have it?
December 8th, 2009 at 9:13 am
I’d like to have the ability to add defects and real-world internal lens reflections. With Fringe, Transformers 2, and of course Star Trek, realistic lens flares are the new hotness. Many of them are done in camera during the shoot. But some are clearly post effects. They would be tricky to replicate with the current KLF.
Check out these flares from Fringe. They don’t look like anything KLF can do…
http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w134/navstar/fringe-ScreenSnapz-crop.gif
http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w134/navstar/fringe-flares2.gif
December 11th, 2009 at 8:13 pm
@John Stanowski
It looks like Andrew have taken good care of that now
http://www.videocopilot.net/blog/2009/12/an-important-day/
December 17th, 2009 at 7:41 am
“They would be tricky to replicate with the current KLF.”
Navarro – in fact, much of the CGI flares used in Star Trek were Knoll Light Factory Pro flares. Also used in Avatar, Transformers 1 and 2, Speed Racer
Revenge of the Sith, Attack of the Clones, Phantom Menace, Star Trek First Contact, Mission Impossible, and Star Trek Generations to name a few.
January 29th, 2010 at 8:43 am
From what I have seen and from what I already know about video fx I can say is the new Optical Flares is a good thing. KLF is a good plug in but it’s pretty much the only one until now. I’m glad they are taking a step forward and making the overall use easier. And I’m positive there will be hard core supporters for both.
Now here’s a good question, who makes a plug in to fix all these lame, unoriginal movies scripts that look awesome after the fact, but like wax fruit leaves me wanting something…more.