Moho Forum

Hi everyone,

I have been working on a project for some time now and have found myself stuck on what I originally thought would be a pretty straightforward shot. I have a character that I would like to have emerge from the shadows (think horror films or Darth Vader at the end of Rogue One) however this character has some flame element gong on and herein lies the problem. I want the dark shadows to cover the character until it moves forward...but since the fire is a "light source" it shouldn't be affected by the shadows. I can't mess with layer order or else objects appear in front of things they shouldn't.

Any ideas of advice would be a huge help! Thank you in advance!

Trevor

I just have to remember how we did this in the olden days with in-camera multiple exposures and masks. First pass would be character plus shadow at 50%, second pass just character at 50% (resulting in a 50% shadow). Third pass would be a back-lit fire (everything black except the fire).

Just duplicate your character. Bottom version will be affected by shadow. Top version everything except fire switched invisible.

Hi,
Thank you for your reply!

I'm a bit slow, I'm wondering if you could explain what you mean by passes? Do mean render out the shots as you had mentioned with shadow layers adjusted to 50% and then comp all renders in my editing software? Or can I achieve this all in AS?

One thing I might mention...I tried duplicating my character to have: background > character layer 1 > shadow layer > character layer 2 > firelight layer and for some reason, the render shut off the first 3 layers... like it was too much to handle. Maybe it's a processing problem on my end but I thought I would mention it.

Thanks again!

To give you an idea this is what I'm working with...sorry the image is so big, I'm not sure how to resize.

Here is it rendered, as you can see the wheel/fire is in the shadow and if I bring it forward it will be in front of the bones...

Ah! Now this requires a completely different setup, I imagined some character with fire on his head or so ...

OK. Fire and character in 1 folder, duplicate this folder. Bottom one as usual inflected by shadow. Top one: make the character mask the fire (the only thing in this folder would be the fire), delete shadow. That's it.

Okay, I think I get it now! Thank you very much!

Trevor