Flares

Flares

For our purposes a “fl are” is any direct light source that
appears in shot, not just a cheesy 17-element lens fl are
whenever the sun pokes around the moon in some science
fi ction television show from the early 1990s (or in several
shots from the more recent movie Hancock). These don’t
come for free in After Effects; 3D lights don’t even create a
visible source if placed in shot until you add the Trapcode
Lux effect (included on this book’s disc).
Real lens fl ares are never cheesy: Our eyes accept them as
natural, even beautiful artifacts without necessarily understanding
anything about what actually causes them .
 Transformers, composited at ILM, is a recent example
of a visual effects movie full of great looking light optics.

Therefore, to get lens fl ares or even simple glints right
(not cheesy), good reference is often key. Only a tiny percentage
of your viewers may know the difference between
lens fl ares from a 50 mm prime and a 120 mm zoom lens,
yet somehow, if you get it wrong, it reads as phony. Odd.
Here are some things you should know about lens fl ares:
. They are consistent for a given lens. Their angles vary
according to the position of the light, but not the shape
or arrangement of the component fl ares.
. The big complex fl ares with lots of components are
created by long zoom lenses with many internal lens
elements. Wider prime lenses create simpler fl ares.
. Because they are caused within the lens, fl ares beyond
the source appear superimposed over the image, even
over objects in the foreground that partially block the
source fl are.
Moreover, not every bright light source that appears in
frame will cause a lens fl are—not even the sun.
The Lens Flare effect included with After Effects is rather
useless as it contains only three basic presets. Knoll Light
Factory, available from Red Giant Software, is much more
helpful both because the presets correspond to real lenses
and because the components can be fully customized in
a modular fashion. The lens fl are plug-in offered by The
Foundry as part of Tinderbox also makes realistic-looking
fl ares possible, although the included defaults are not so
convincing.