Troublesome lens flare not doing what it is told. Please help?

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
January 29, 2019
2 replies
2075 views

Hi Guys,

I have tried everything to solve this little issue I am having with a blue lens flare not following the path it is assigned to.

The Blue lens flare is programmed to follow the blue light streak but for some reason it continually leaves this assigned path.

You can see from the below video that this pesky little bugger is not sticking to his assigned path (it worked perfectly for the red one)

flares not tracking light - YouTube

I'm hoping somebody can assist me in determining why the blue lens flare leaves the assigned path of the blue streak. I used the exaxct same method on the red streak so I'm not sure why this is occuring.

If it helps I can provide the project file too.

The tutorial I am following: How To Create A Light Streak Animation In After Effects (3 Part Tutori | Motion Array

Thanks so much guys and I look forward to finding out what the hell I have done wrong.

This topic has been closed for replies.

Jose Panadero

Community Expert

Have you changed the scale of any of your layers? This could affect the position on the lens flare because effects are proccessed befor the transformations in layers.

Andrew Yoole

Inspiring

It looks like there's either or both a Z space issue, or an expression issue with whatever null is driving the flare's location.

Please post a screenshot of your timeline with all changed parameters of your lens flare layer visible, including expressions.

A

accountsa62848780Author

Participant

Hi Andrew and Jose, Thank you so much for your replies. I have been pulling my hair out trying to figure out the issue. I think you could both be right but as yet I'm not sure how to check for the things you have suggested. I love Ae and I want to get better so I really really appreciate your assistance. I can't recall adjusting the scale of the path but if you could explain to me how I can check it then I will get on it. Once again thanks so much for your replies.

R

Rick Gerard

Community Expert

To troubleshoot layers start by selecting the layers and pressing the U key twice. That will show you all the modified properties.

I haven't got the time to go through the tutorials and figure out how they are tying the position of the lens flare to the particle path. If you are copying and pasting paths then the position of the CTI is critical. If you are using parenting, the position of the CTI when you parent layers is critical. If you have scaled layers and you are copying a vector path to paste it to a motion path the paths will not line up.

From your screenshot, it looks like you are just using a simple toComp expression to convert 3D position data to 2D position data.

thisComp.layer(“Light 1“).toComp([0,0,0]); should work even if you have separated the position property of the light layer. If you have scaled the layer with the lens flare applied, or if that layer is 3D, or that layer is not at comp center, the paths won't line up. This is where the UU trick will come in handy. If you have scaled or moved your lens flare layer those properties will show up and just resetting the values should fix things.

If it were my project I would add some another expression to flare intensity that looks at the distance from the camera to the light and adjusts the size and brightness of the lens flare. Dan Ebberts has a solution for that (search Dan Ebberts lens flare) and there are several good tutorials on the Video Copilot site that explain how to do the kind of thing it looks like you are trying to do.

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