Simulate light falloff, Online resources about lights, Move a camera, light, or point of interest – Adobe After Effects CS4 User Manual
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USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4
Layers and properties
Last updated 12/21/2009
Simulate light falloff
Native After Effects lights don’t include falloff properties, which means that the illumination of a layer does not
decrease as the distance between the layer and the light increases.
You can simulate light falloff using expressions or one of several third-party plug-ins created for this purpose.
properties of a layer to simulate the result of light falloff when the layer is farther from the light.
Online resources about lights
Eran Stern provides a video tutorial on the
that demonstrates the use of lights as adjustment
layers, to precisely control which layers are affected by which lights.
.
Trish and Chris Meyer provide a tutorial for using 3D layers, lights, and cameras in a PDF excerpt from their book
After Effects Apprentice
Move a camera, light, or point of interest
Camera layers and light layers each include a Point Of Interest property, which specifies the point in the composition
at which the camera or light points. By default, the point of interest is at the center of the composition. You can move
the point of interest at any time.
Before moving a camera, choose a view other than Active Camera so that you can see the point of interest icon and
the boundaries defining its angle.
1
Select a camera or light layer.
2
(Optional) To set the camera or light to ignore the point of interest, choose Layer
> Transform
> Auto-Orient and
select an option other than Orient Towards Point Of Interest.
3
Using the Selection or Rotation tool, do one of the following:
•
To move the camera or light and its point of interest, position the pointer over the axis you want to adjust, and drag.
•
To move the camera or light along a single axis without moving the point of interest, Ctrl-drag (Windows) or
Command-drag (Mac OS) the axis.
•
To move the camera or light freely without moving the point of interest, drag the camera icon
or light icon.
•
To move the point of interest, drag the point of interest icon
.
Note: As with all properties, you can also modify a camera or light’s position, rotation, and orientation properties directly
in the Timeline panel.
When working with a camera or light layer, create a null object layer and use an expression to link the Point Of
Interest property of the camera or light to the Position property of the null layer. Then, you can animate the Point Of
Interest property by moving the null object. It is often easier to select and see a null object than it is to select and see the
point of interest.
You can also move a camera with the Camera tools. (See “
Adjust a camera view or working 3D view
By default, a camera's wireframe is only visible when the camera is selected. To always show the camera wireframe,
set the view options for the Composition panel (View > View Options). (See “