CompuServe Thread

#Lens Flare- Need Help!

5 messages in this thread
#71700From: Ed OatsJan 7, 1994 10:25 AM
I have some text objects created in the spline editor. I used texture 1 as metals, silver, polished .9, nad have a global reflection brush of some sky and clouds. I want to get an animated sparkle effect on the text. I have tried adding lens flare as texture 2, but no matter how I adjust the parameters, no flare at all. Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong or recommend a different method to get the sparkles to dance on the metal? Thanks- Ed
#71756From: David HofmannJan 8, 1994 6:40 AM
Ed, I'm just working on an animation which is similar to yours (my text is gold). Since there is no object or camera movement for a long time I thought about that effect, too. If you add two small lights and rotate them horizontal in front of the text you have some nice highlights moving across your text. But you said you want sparks. Hm, maybe someone else has a good idea. -David
#71848From: Mike HalvorsonJan 9, 1994 3:45 PM
Ed, Apply the Lensflar texture to a plane. Then set it to have two states, make the object tiny and then big for the second state. MOrph the states where you want a sparkle, do it quickly and it will look great. This is not a lensflare but a sparkle, you might have to play with the texture to get the type of sparkle that you want but it looks great when you find the right choices that suit your needs. Remember that the effect of a sparkle only lasts a few frames not a long time. If you want to enhance that effect, pass another light source real close to the area where the sprakle is going to happen, the light should be in addition to the normal scene light. It should also only last a bit before and a bit after the sparkle is displayed. Hope that helps. Mike
#71902From: Ed OatsJan 10, 1994 1:49 PM
Mike, I played with lensflare and couldn't get it over the weekend, so I took to cowards way out. I made a thin four pointed star object and set the attributes to the same as the objects needing the flash, only more so (more specular, more hardness, more reflection). I then manually placed the star(s) on the object for each frame of a ten frame sequence, rotating them in y axis randomly. This gave me ten frames I could loop to get close to the desired effect. As usual with Imagine, even if I'm to dumb to do something the "right" way, I can usually find some way to do it. Regards, Ed
#71927From: Mike HalvorsonJan 10, 1994 8:13 PM
Ed, Sounds very cool to me, Good Job. Mike