Page 1 of 2

Darkening an area

Posted: Fri Nov 12, 2010 11:33 pm
by gamester
Bear with me here while I set the scene.

It’s a night club. People, tables and chairs etc etc. Regular lighting. Now I want the lights to come down but just over the crowd. The stage will be a different story. Another lighting effect will take place there.
I also want to bring the lights back up on the crowd. Can this be done?

Thanks

Edit: When the lights go down, I mean not ALL thew way down. I think most got that but In case :)

Posted: Sat Nov 13, 2010 1:05 am
by DELETED
DELETED

Posted: Sat Nov 13, 2010 3:35 am
by slowtiger
Let's say you have two elements which shall get different lighting. Of couse each of them is in its own group layer:

- A group/bone layer
- - some stuff
- - some other stuff
- B group/bone layer
- - the stage stuff

Add one layer with a dark (black or coloured) rectangle covering the whole frame. Setup:

- A group/bone layer (hide all)
- - dark rectangle layer (mask this layer)
- - some stuff (add to mask)
- - some other stuff (add to mask))
- B group/bone layer
- - the stage stuff

Set the dark rectangle layer to "multiply" and its opacity to 50% for a start. Render. You may now animate the opacity from 0% to 100% to get a "lights fade out" effect on the crowd.

Tip: I put stuff in groups a lot for these shots, just because I only have to adjust one group layer's mask settings for this, instead of dealing with dozens of character layers.

I did something like that last year: http://www.slowtiger.de/examples/saal.html. Here I cut a hole into the rectangle and moved that layer to get the effect of moving spotlights.

Posted: Sat Nov 13, 2010 3:35 am
by Genete
Can someone PLEASE ban rajlostmarble for once at all!??
I'm about to abandon this forum completely...
-G

Posted: Sat Nov 13, 2010 3:38 am
by jahnocli
Ditto. Spammers should be managed. At present they seem to have free access, which just puts off genuine forum members. If this continues, there will only be spammers left. Is this what Smith Micro wants? (Assuming they give a damn, which isn't borne out by experience).

Posted: Sat Nov 13, 2010 6:55 am
by F.M.
Why don't we just line them up against a wall! :lol: :lol: :lol:

Posted: Sat Nov 13, 2010 9:13 pm
by gamester
slowtiger wrote:Let's say you have two elements which shall get different lighting. Of couse each of them is in its own group layer:

- A group/bone layer
- - some stuff
- - some other stuff
- B group/bone layer
- - the stage stuff

Add one layer with a dark (black or coloured) rectangle covering the whole frame. Setup:

- A group/bone layer (hide all)
- - dark rectangle layer (mask this layer)
- - some stuff (add to mask)
- - some other stuff (add to mask))
- B group/bone layer
- - the stage stuff

Set the dark rectangle layer to "multiply" and its opacity to 50% for a start. Render. You may now animate the opacity from 0% to 100% to get a "lights fade out" effect on the crowd.

Tip: I put stuff in groups a lot for these shots, just because I only have to adjust one group layer's mask settings for this, instead of dealing with dozens of character layers.

I did something like that last year: http://www.slowtiger.de/examples/saal.html. Here I cut a hole into the rectangle and moved that layer to get the effect of moving spotlights.
Thank you. That makes sence. Looking forward to giving it a try. I wonder if you wouldnt mind solving two more seemingly related mysterys. With new updated of the same file sorta
http://www.mediafire.com/?gvuahcaawyq9329

Two things changed for some reason. 1, the lights are behind of the character instead of in front. Even tho the character is on the botom of the layers list.

And 2. The light fixtures themselves. The lights are in front of the fixtures instead of behind them, even tho in the group Parcan1 for instance, youll see that the red light is bellow the LightParcan1 (the fixture). It looks ok in edit mode but when you render, the light jumps to the front for some reason. Just the opposite of the first problem.

Im looking forward to this one. Iz confused :)

EDIT: These are frames 97 thru 161

Posted: Sat Nov 13, 2010 9:27 pm
by gamester
I don’t know why everyone is so freaked out on the spam. Just ignore it. By talking about it and getting emotional over it is exactly what they want. Pretend it isn’t there. If your all that bothered by it, PM a moderator. Ill volunteer for the job myself just to calm everyone down.

It’s not something that will affect your lives in anyway. Just ignore it. The other day there were like 6 or 7 spams. I simply scrolled past them to get what I was looking for. No big deal. If it was like 2 or 3 pages worth, it’d be another story. But Good golly miss molly, give the moderators some slack. It’s a great forum after all. I’m sure they’ll upgrade when they can.

I wasn’t going to even mention anything but since it’s my topic, I’ll put in my 2 cents. Give the guys a break huh? Its free after all. And most every question of importance gets answered. So relax and be happy :)

Posted: Sun Nov 14, 2010 1:39 am
by slowtiger
Without checking the file: have you looked for layer ordering keys? It happened more than once to me that I accidentially changed the layer order in some frame.

Posted: Sun Nov 14, 2010 2:35 am
by jahnocli
gamester wrote:I don’t know why everyone is so freaked out on the spam. Just ignore it. By talking about it and getting emotional over it is exactly what they want. Pretend it isn’t there. If your all that bothered by it, PM a moderator. Ill volunteer for the job myself just to calm everyone down.

It’s not something that will affect your lives in anyway. Just ignore it. The other day there were like 6 or 7 spams. I simply scrolled past them to get what I was looking for. No big deal. If it was like 2 or 3 pages worth, it’d be another story. But Good golly miss molly, give the moderators some slack. It’s a great forum after all. I’m sure they’ll upgrade when they can.

I wasn’t going to even mention anything but since it’s my topic, I’ll put in my 2 cents. Give the guys a break huh? Its free after all. And most every question of importance gets answered. So relax and be happy :)
Here's why: New Topic: "Should I get anime studio or toon boom?"
It's spam. A number of people waste their time responding to it. I've done it too. It's frustrating. And with a little care and attention, most of it can be cut out and the moderators' workload will be a lot less. Sure, you can smile through it. But personally, I'd like it dealt with.

Posted: Sun Nov 14, 2010 5:26 am
by Danimal
jahnocli wrote:Here's why: New Topic: "Should I get anime studio or toon boom?"
It's spam. A number of people waste their time responding to it
I'm with gamester: let 'em respond. Why should it get you all up in arms? It's meaningless. Ignore it.

There's a member on the board here who's an obvious troll looking to do nothing but stir up trouble. He's usually successful. If people ignored him, he'd go away.

Smile through it? Nah, just do nothing. It's really not worth thinking about at all.

Posted: Sun Nov 14, 2010 6:09 am
by jahnocli
Danimal wrote:Smile through it? Nah, just do nothing. It's really not worth thinking about at all.
If 90% of the posts were spam, would you feel that way? I'm not going to say any more on this topic, but spam can be managed, is all I'm saying. Other forums don't seem to have this problem...

Posted: Sun Nov 14, 2010 6:43 am
by slowtiger
May I humbly suggest that we don't discuss any spam policy within totally legitimate threads by others? It ruins the thread.

Posted: Sun Nov 14, 2010 6:48 am
by sbtamu
I looked at the file and I have never seen AS do this before. Maybe someone else can take a look at it.

Posted: Sun Nov 14, 2010 8:14 am
by InfoCentral
The SPAM on this forum is just getting ridiculous!