Creating Volume Light
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Imagine a spotlight on a stage in a smoky comedy club. This tutorial explores creating smoke through a beam of light.
Note:
- An easy way to achieve this effect is with a plug-in called Trapcode Lux.
- vollight.zip contains the After Effect Project (uses AE 4.1) for Volume Light, a Photoshop file, and a text file.
Instructions:
- Create our light. We've supplied this for you in the download file. If you want to create your own you need the cone and its hotspot as two separate layers. This will give you more control over the light parameters.
- In Photoshop, draw the cone selection and set the feather option to 6. Do the same with the hotspot, then change the cone layer mode to soft light and the hotspot layer mode to overlay.
- Import the Photoshop document as a comp. Select the "Light Cone" layer and apply the following filters:
- Transitions > Block Dissolve
- Block width: 26.5
- Block height: set keyframes at 1.7 and 1 (easy out / easy in)
- Feather: 9.5
- Transition complete: 10 (use a higher number for more contrast) - Stylize > Scatter amount: 45 (vertical)
- Blur & Sharpen>Fast Blur Blur amount: 2.5
You can animate other parameters besides Block height. I achieved better results animating only this option.
To increase the fog inside the cone light you can duplicate the cone layer, apply the Gradient Wipe filter and change the layer opacity. In photoshop create a new document, press d to restore the foreground and background colors and apply the clouds filter. Use this layer as the gradient layer in the gradient wipe menu. Set transition softness to 30, and create keyframes for transition complete. You can even use time remapping and create new keyframes for the transition complete option.