Real Lens Flare

PROJECTION STRIP

The projection strip contains the various visual elements (core projections and lens simulations/reflections) that comprise a flare. When you select a preset, its layered components appear here. Clicking on any one of these elements will open its customizable properties in the inspector pane.

Click the + icon on the projection strip’s left to add a new core projection. (The five core projection types are detailed later.) Designer allows up to the following number of core projections to a lens flare and thus to the projection strip:

• Starburst: only 1
• Glow ball: up to 3
• Halo: up to 3
• Gate flare: only 1
• Single spike: up to 3

Note how selecting a core projection, lens simulation, or stylized flare from the presets shows a very limited set of aperture information (along with light source and flare properties settings) in the inspector pane. Essentially, only the graphical representation of the aperture blade configuration and f-stop control are shown. However, if you select a preset and then click on a core projection in the projection strip, the full assortment of aperture settings appears. For example:

VFX Real Lens Flares takes this approach to provide more control granularity as you dig deeper into a lens flare’s components.

It may be useful to isolate certain projections by hiding others, much like turning off visibility for project layers. To do so, mouse-over the strike-out symbol in the top-right corner of a projection’s thumbnail in the strip. Clicking it will turn the symbol from white to red and hide that projection’s layer.

Finally, the projection strip includes a few additional functions accessible by right-clicking on a strip thumbnail:

• Reset: Reverts the properties of that projection to their default values, NOT to the values saved for that preset. For example, the Hazy Late Summer stylized flare preset has a starburst core projection with size of 83 percent. Selecting Reset for this will change the size value to 100%, the default for starburst core projections.
• Hide: Makes that projection layer invisible, just like selecting the thumbnail’s strike-through symbol.
• Solo: Turns all projection layers invisible except that of the selected thumbnail.
• Delete: Deletes that thumbnail and its associated projection layer. Alternatively, you can delete a projection by selecting its thumbnail and hitting the Delete key.