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Lens Flare (Studio Version Only)
Simulates different kinds of lens flares resulting from the interplay of light through an aperture of selectable shape bouncing within layered optical elements in a lens. Four groups of controls give you a lot of ways to customize the presets to create your own effect:
Lens Flare Preset
You can choose a type of flare from the Lens Flare Preset drop-down. If you manipulate the controls to create your own effect, this drop-down switches to Custom.
Select Output
The Select Output drop-down lets you switch among the following viewing options:
— Final Image: (Default) Shows the lens flare composited against the current clip.
— Flare Elements Alone: Shows the isolated flare, making it easier to adjust.
— Source Mask and Magnified Source Mask: Let you see the mask used to control the lens flare brightness.
Light Source Masking
Three additional controls at the top let you create a quick and dirty luma key to create a mask that you can use for occluding the lens flare effect behind foreground elements in the scene. For example,
if you’re using lens flare to simulate the sun in the sky moving behind trees, these controls let you use those tree silhouettes to shift and modify the flare source accordingly.
— Enable Light Source Masking: This checkbox enables the Mask Threshold and Virtual Light Source Size sliders. You can then choose either Source Mask or Magnified Source Mask to see the mask that’s created by raising the Mask Threshold slider.
— Mask Threshold: Raising this slider pulls a fast Luma Key that masks off darker foreground elements (such as trees against the horizon) and limits the flare to areas of the picture where the light source of the flaring can “shine through” (In this example, shining between the trees on the horizon).
— Virtual Light Source Size: This slider determines how quickly the center of a flare will disappear behind the luma-keyed mask you’ve created; higher values (simulating bigger light sources) cause a flare to disappear more slowly when passing “behind” a feature of the image that’s being keyed via the Mask Threshold slider.
Position
Position parameters let you adjust the X and Y Position of the simulated light source that’s causing the flare. There are three ways you can adjust the flare position.
— You can Adjust the X and Y Position sliders.
— You can turn on the OpenFX Overlay in the Viewer and drag the on-screen control.
— You can motion track elements within the scene using the FX Tracker.
Checking the Move With Sizing checkbox lets the lens flare retain its relative position in the frame if the Input and Editing sizing are changed.