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Hi there, Simon Walker here. And I've got a quick tip for
creating custom lens flares in Final Cut Pro using Knoll
Light Factory. And as you know, I'm a fan of producing interesting
quality work, but doing it whilst staying in Final
Cut Pro. And Knoll Light Factory is one of those plug-ins that
lets you add nice visual flourishes to footage and graphics,
but as it works in Final Cut, this means it saves you time, because you don't
have to go and open up an external graphics program, you can add these flourishes using
a filter. I'm in Final Cut and I've got a Matte Solid
on the timeline, and I've set it to have a black background
by changing the colour in the Controls Tab. I can apply Knoll Light Factory to this solid
by going up to the Effects Menu and choosing Video Filters, Knoll Light Factory.
The plug-in ships with two filters: Knoll Light Factory is the one that has the Lens
Editor, where you can create and edit your own custom lens flares, and Knoll Light Factory
EZ is the one that has preset flares that you can select from a drop down list.
And this EZ version is a really quick way of adding a lens
flare, as it's really fast to apply the filter and then select a
flare from the presets. This is great, because there's a whole bunch
of them… more than 70 preset flares to choose from
Even so, there are going to be times when your Art
Director or Producer comes along and says “that's a great flare, but it needs a slight
tweak, perhaps a change of colour or maybe an additional element, like a horizontal
stripe”. And whilst you can assemble these flares with
the Lens Editor in Knoll Light Factory, it's so much
faster to find the preset that it's based on and then edit it, rather then to build
one up from scratch. So where do these custom presets live on your
computer? Well if you're working in Final Cut they are
located in the FxPlugins folder. But don't worry, you don't
have to figure this out and then remember where it is, as there's a handy document on
the Red Giant website that tells you exactly where they are.
Actually there are a range of useful documents on the site in the Support section with answers
to frequently asked questions about the different plugins.
And in this case, this particular page shows where to find
the presets, for both Final Cut and After Effects.
So How do I Access the Knoll Light Factory custom
lenses? Well, scroll down this page a bit, and here
they are, in the FxPlug folder. Although I've been showing you this tip in
Final Cut, it works equally well if you're using After Effects,
and this works whether you're working on Windows or
Mac. You just need to navigate to a slightly different folder to find the
Preset Flares, depending on which particular operating system and software you're using.
And if I switch back to the Finder, here they are on my
Mac… By the way, it's simple to add a shortcut
into this sidebar navigation area, which makes working with
files much easier .
Once you've found the folder you're after, you can just
drag it into the sidebar, and this shortcut is then easy to
access, not just from the Finder, but from other programs
too. So back in Final Cut, I'm going to add Knoll
Light Factory to this Colour Solid… and then I can hit
the options button to bring up the Lens Editor.
As I mentioned before, it's quite usual to use this editor to
build up a flare from scratch by using all sorts of lens
elements from the drop down menu. But in this case, I want to open up the Rock
Concert preset flare from the Custom Lenses folder, which
thanks to my little sidebar shortcut, is now easy to find.
And once I've got it loaded, it's simple to add, say, a stripe,
and this means I've customized the flare in far less time
that it would have taken to build it. And there may well be times that you'd like
to adjust the colour of some elements to suit a particular
shot you're working on, or there may be a brand that you
have to match the colour to, even if it's just changing
the colour of one or two elements, maybe a stripe or perhaps
the PolySpreads. So you can start with one of
the prebuilt preset flares and very quickly make it your
own within a few tweaks.
And you can then save this custom flare for later use. Let's
say I save it as Rock Concert Stripe… and I'll save it in my
own custom flare folder… I can then apply it to another clip I've been
working on. On this clip, I've used the default flare
and animated it behind some text...
I've dragged the text in the clip underneath this solid into
the Obscuration layer, and I've adjusted the source size so
it gently looses brightness as it goes behind the text...
And so replacing it with my custom flare is just a question
of going up to the Lens Editor… Locating my Custom Flare...
And then Hitting OK. And now this new lens flare, the one with
the stripe nicely fades in and out behind this text.
So this technique of grabbing a preset flare and then just
slightly tweaking it to match your project is so much faster
than building up an entire flare from scratch. I've uploaded this Final Cut timeline and
the custom flare to the RedGiantPeople website in case you
want to have a look to see how I've set up this effect.
So go to RedGiantPeople.com and search for Simon
Walker and you'll find it as one of my free presets, and you
can download it from there. Also, if you visit the main RedGiantSoftware.com
website, you can have a look at my Getting Started
in Knoll Light Factory video which goes through how you can
setup a lens flare and add it to a handheld shot to
accentuate the sunshine, or accentuate how the sun looks
in your shot, but without using any keyframes!
And this is a really nice technique because it's such a
timesaver. So, I hope this QuickTip has been useful,
and that it'll save you some time when creating your own custom
flares. But until the next tip, good luck and have
fun!