Moho Forum

What's going on forum it's been a while, got a question about shining surfaces. I'm about to do a music video for some one and they said they would like "Shiney Chains"! The example they want is like when you see a diamond in a cartoon and the shine moves to the tip of the diamond and the sound effects is like "Ting". Also just a regular shine of chain would also help! Thanks in advance

-John
Thaillist Entertainment

P.S. Check me out on youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-1qMhhTOb0
Jay-Z Animation

You could construct the "spark" or "shine", which basically is an abstraction of a lens flare effect, in AS on its own layer, then move and rotate it. Or, if you need a whole shower of it, feed a particle layer with it.

You'll need to build it from several separate shapes, each with its own gradient fill from white to transparent. The finished layer could be set to "screen". Maybe you ant to duplicate that layer and blur the copy heavily, to give a "halo" effect.

AS is basically a vector drawing application. "Shine" as you describe is something that has to be "drawn". How would you draw or paint "shiny chains" in Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop? You create a shape that is dark and another shape over the dark shape that is brighter to be the specular high light. As for having the "shine" move as the shape moves you could do that with gradient fills possibly or with masked shapes, or just moving those shapes by hand with bones or point motion.

Ultimately the "shine" or shading has to be drawn by the artist. Knowledge of drawing light and shade in 2D would help. Study shiny chains to see how they look.

There is no "lighting" in AS. No movable light sources like in 3D applications. There is no "shiny" fill effect.

You could always create the shiny chains in a paint program or use a photograph modified in a paint program and string those images together with bones in AS. Then if you want a "twinkle" of light from the specular highlight, add it on another layer.

As you can see there are many ways to achieve the effect. None are as simple as pushing a button or using a special fill style unfortunately.

-vern

To follow up Vern's reply, another way of doing this (and, most likely, what any pro would do) would be to do it in Post.

This sort of effect is nearly always post production anyway, even if it's done in the same program or manner. So draw the chains in AS and after it's rendered use a program like AE or Photoshop (which can batch process files as well) and add the "shine".

I really have too much time on my hands. But here's a chain I did right now. As you see I suck in particles ... but the chain is really nice.

http://www.slowtiger.de/examples/chain.html