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Matt J. W.
Participating Frequently
March 13, 2022
Question

Light Wrap + Edge Blur

  • March 13, 2022
  • 6 replies
  • 8898 views

I'm one of those crazy people who primarily uses After Effects for compositing. (And has since 4.1.)

 

As I move to an M1 Mac, I'll lose compatibility with two plug ins I use often: Red Giant Light Wrap and Red Giant Edge Blur (from their long-discontinued keying suite).

 

I can license Boris BCC and Sapphire and together (for thousands of dollars) can get replacement plug ins.

 

Along with a lot of stuff I don't need. And for a few thousand dollars.

 

These are basic effects built into Nuke and I would love to see Adobe include them in future releases.

 

Light Wrap in particular is invaluable although for me Edge Blur is what I am having more trouble replacing.

 

Thanks!

    6 replies

    A
    Alejandro23658643bnpo
    Participant
    March 5, 2024

    Hi, 

    I was struggling also with this, "Refine Soft Matte" did the trick for me.

    Warren Heaton
    Community Expert
    Warren HeatonCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    January 29, 2024

    Red Giant moved everything from Red Giant Key Correct Pro into Red Giant Supercomp, part of Red Giant VFX.  That's the case for Intel based Mac, Apple Silicon Mac and Windows.

    ProductionCreate offers Light Wrap effect: https://news.productioncrate.com/download-free-light-wrap-plugin-for-after-effects/#:~:text=The%20great%20way%20to%20build,for%20even%20more%20artistic%20control.

    E
    ericmlevy
    Inspiring
    January 29, 2024

    I use BCC Light Wrap and for Edge Blur I now use a saved custom preset for Roughen Edges, where you set it to Spiky and lower Edge Sharpness and Fractal Influence to 0.

      T
      Tal_Gliks
      Participant
      January 28, 2024

      Hi, did you find any solution for that?
      Im having the same problem, missing Edge Blur and Light Wrap on silicon mac

      M
      Matt J. W.Author
      Participating Frequently
      January 29, 2024

      I'm using Sapphire now. Or Channel Blur on the alpha channel, even though it accomplishes something different. Sapphire has edge blur and light wrap (they seem good) but the main issue is cost (I got a license through work). I think Red Giant has the same effects in their Supercomp suite, but Key Correct was simpler/more affordable.

      R
      Community Expert
      Rick GerardCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      December 20, 2023

      Light Wrap is very easy without third-party plugins and works with 32-bit projects. Here are the steps.

      1. Duplicate the background layer and move it above the foreground layer (keyed or rotoscoped for transparency)
      2. Name the top copy of the Background "Light Wrap" and add  Set Matte
      3. Select the Foreground layer as the source + Effects and Masks, then invert the matte
      4. Add Gaussian Blur - Repeat Edge Pixels and set the blur to about 50 pixels (fine-tune later)
      5. Duplicate the top copy of Set Matte (Ctrl/Cmnd + d) and move it below the Blur effect
      6. Turn off Invert for set matte
      7. Set the blend mode of the Light Wrap layer to Screen, and adjust the Blur level and opacity to get the look you want

       

      It takes about 2 minutes. 

       

        M
        Matt J. W.Author
        Participating Frequently
        January 29, 2024

        This is helpful. I don't always have time to do kind of thing – but it's really useful. 

        E
        ericmlevy
        Inspiring
        December 20, 2023

        Matt, I'm a veteran compositor who also uses After Effects, and I've been dragging my feet about switching to Nuke for years.

         

        I also need an Edge Blur plugin that works in 32-bit color with MFR.

         

        I'm probably going to look for a plugin developer in the next few weeks, and see how much it would be to have them write it.

         

        There aren't many of us AE compers left. I'd love to see your work.

        M
        Matt J. W.Author
        Participating Frequently
        January 29, 2024

        I'm using Sapphire now, which has Edge Blur and Light Wrap. It's good, but expensive. But it is good! 

         

        I don't work in 32 bit color very often since so many plug ins are incompatible.  Add Grain, mainly. It's okay with log ProRes. But difficult to work with EXRs when your grain management clips any values >1. I don't think After Effects will ever be as serious a compositing suite like Nuke because it's only really designed for individual artists, but there are a few things I'd like to see so that for individual artists can do what they need to.

         

        Namely, Light Wrap and Edge Blur built in would be great. 

         

        32 bit support for Add Grain, etc. would be.

         

        But, this is more on Neat Video, the grain management in general is d. Rather than using Add Grain, I'd rather Neat Video had the option to generate grain from the same profile it used to de-noise. This is a common request. It's still not as simple as with Nuke, but it would be better than what there is now!

         

        takashi vfx
        takashi vfx
        Inspiring
        January 30, 2024

        tip for the grain. you can extract just grain using subtract. put original plate and de-noise plate above layer as subtract. precomp those two layers as grain precomop. in the main comp do your work on de-noise plate (track, paint-work, comp, key etc) and put this grain precomp as add, you get original grain on top of everything. it has to be 32bit comp for the subtract to work correctly though.  also if you use opencolorIO and swiftch back n forth with Linear and log, you can still use 16bit effects on 32bit linear comp. also like to know how other AE compers dealing with missing Edgeblur for apple slicon Mac. 

          Roland Kahlenberg
          Roland Kahlenberg
          Legend
          March 13, 2022

          Channel Blur may be able to replicate the Edge Blur effect. You should be able to build a Light Wrap rig which can be re-used if you make judicious use of PreComps for the layers; the Chroma Shot and Background. HTH

          Very Advanced After Effects Training | Adaptive & Responsive Toolkits | Intelligent Design Assets (IDAs) | MoGraph Design System DEV
          M
          Matt J. W.Author
          Participating Frequently
          March 13, 2022

          Thanks. I've used Channel Blur in the past and it's the next best thing but not the same. It only blurs the alpha channel rather than blurring all four channels in the area around the matte. 

           

          As for the light wrap rig, I've used that in the past but it's extraordinarily time-consuming appliying it again and again over the course of a project, as I'll often have multiple light wrap passes on a single shot then multiply that by twenty shots or whatever and it's unweildly. 

           

          I'm learning toward switching to Nuke at this point but it's not M1 native either and $10k/year is hard to swallow.

          R
          Community Expert
          Rick GerardCommunity Expert
          Community Expert
          March 15, 2022

          All of the Red Giant effects work if you run AE in Rosetta and it is still very responsive on my M1 Macbook Pro. Even works on the bare bones M1 Mac Mini I bought to see if my apps would work. Give that a try. Select the AE Beta app in the finder, right-click and select Show Info, then select Open in Rosetta. 

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