lens effects leaks and flicker with standard max render

[hartley]

I am have a problem with lens effect glow used for a lantern light fixture glow. I am experiencing some leaking a alot of flicking when obscured by geometry in the scene. I am @ 90% on a 15 min amination and cannot switch renderers at this point.

[erickdt]

If you use AfterFX for post editing you can very easily add the glow effect afterwards. I actually find this method to be more controlable and for that reason it's my preference...

[hartley]

Thank you for your reply. I have after effects. Sorry to bother, but could you give a brief description of the proccess??

[erickdt]

I don't know if this is the most effective way but this is how I've done it:

 

After you're done rendering your animation(s) save a seperate copy of your max file. Then make everything except the element(s) that you want to glow black with 100% self illumination. Additionally make sure you enviromental background is black. Then make the element(s) that you want to glow white with 100% self illumination. Re-render your animation as (whatever your original filename was)-lamp knockout or something similar. I assume you're using scanline rendering, so this won't take too long to re-render. For those of you who use V-Ray, you can do the same exact thing except you use V-Ray light materials with both black and white materials respectively.

 

After you've done that bring all of these files into AfterFX. Once the files have been brought into AfterFX you can drag them into the composition panel. You'll need to drag in 2 copies of your original animation files. Place the "knockout" animation file behind your original animation files or you can simply turn it off.

 

You then right click on the copy of your original animation that's on the top of the layer order and go to: effect - channel - set matte. In the set matte dialogue you'll be able to select the layer that contains your "knock out" animation as your matte. Where it says "use for matte" click on "luminance". You've successfuly matted out the part that you want to glow.

 

Once again you right click on the same layer and go to: effect - stylize - glow. In that dialogue you'll find all sorts of parameters you can adjust depending on what kind of glow effect you're looking for.

 

To do the same process across several different files simply click on the effects tab under this effects layer you've just created and copy the layer effects (by going to edt - copy). You can then paste them onto a different layer in a different document. You'll need to reset the matte to the proper layer (since it will differ per camera) but that will be the only change you'll have to make.

 

I hope that all makes sense! Good luck!