Alleyoop | 11 years ago | 9 comments | 2.1K views
Hi, I've used Bluff to create a number of titles over the years, but there's one aspect of Bluff I don't understand, and that's the Point Light. Often after I complete a Title there is a section that appears dark and I would like to light it but I just cannot understand how to do that. As I adjust the Position controls I fail to see any sign of a light. Can anyone point me to a tutorial or suggest some exercises I could follow to experiment with the Point Light so that i can illuminate a specific section of a Title?
I have a jpeg shot of a Title that is typical of this problem, can I upload that?
Thanks, Alleyoop.
Here's a simple experiment that can help you understand the point light:
-click the NEW SHOW button (all the way to the left on the tool window)
-select the Point Light layer (with the dropdown above the PLAY button)
-select the POSITION property (with the dropdown above the 3 sliders)
Now play around with the 3 sliders. The represent the horizontal, vertical and depth position of the point light. You will immediately see the lighting change of the text.
michiel, 11 years ago
Sometimes you do not want layers to be lightened.
You can do this by:
-clicking the CHANGE EFFECT... button
-selecting the NotLightened.fx effect
michiel, 11 years ago
Thank you for your response Michiel. I had already tried that experiment just prior to my post, I only see the bevel of the text change, which does indicate the position of the light, but it wasn't till I added a flare that I could clearly see the light. I can change the size and so on, but at a certain point in my title video, toward the end, I want to dim the point light down. I thought that I could simply do this with a key frame and reduce Light Intensity, but Light Intensity seems to make no difference whether 0 or 4.
Alleyoop, 11 years ago
If your text is already fully white, you will not see much change when you move the light closer to it because it is already fully lightened.
Darkening the colour to for example, (200,200,200) will make it more sensitive to the light position and intensity. You can do this with the COLOUR property of the text layer.
You also might want to play around with the SPECULARITY property:
michiel, 11 years ago
Setting the LIGHT INTENSITY property to 0 should make everything black.
Some ideas:
-maybe you have 2 point light layers
-maybe you have set the COLOUR property of the ambient light layer to non-black
-maybe you are using a shader (an FX file) that ignores this
Again, start experimenting with simple shows. When you choose FILE > NEW SHOW and set the LIGHT INTENSITY property of the point light layer to 0 your screen will be black.
michiel, 11 years ago
Thank you, yes things changed more predictably when I deleted the first point light layer and changed the colour of the text.
After that I went to the show I had been working on, it is a modification of the World Premier26 template. I found that adjusting the FX Reflection Factor helped, but there is still a shadow across some of the letters that I would like to eliminate. I'll continue to play around with it.
Your information helped me understand the Point Light better, I appreciate your patience.
Alleyoop, 11 years ago
Shadows look very nice!
But because point lights can't be used with shadow maps, I assume this is a directional light, right?
michiel, a year ago
Yes, I combined (directional light and point lights )the two, it's a bit of a cheat, but it looks good :)
LostBoyz, a year ago