A transition that uses animated Knoll Light Factory flares, with 31 unique presets to move you quickly from shot to shot. Includes control over brightness, angle, and edge feathering as well as a choice of dissolve or linear wipe transitions.
Presets
Use the dozens of lens- and direction-based presets in Knoll Light Transition to do most of your A-to-B heavy lifting. Simply keyframe the Mix duration (see below) and tune to taste! Find these presets via the blue Open Dashboard... button or the Choose a Preset... button below it.
As with all other Universe tools, you can modify or create a Knoll Light Transition look and then save it under its own name by pressing the Save Preset... button.
Getting Started in a Timeline
Drag the transition over your edit in the timeline, placing it at the end or beginning. Alternatively, you can place it between two successive clips.
Modify the
Duration
of the transition either by entering a length in the field or dragging directly in the timeline.
You can choose the
Alignment
(Center at Cut, Start at Cut, End at Cut, or Custom Start) either by positioning the transition in the timeline or by choosing from the Alignment drop-down in some host applications.
Getting Started in a Compositor
Apply the transition to the layer from which you want to transition.
Choose the footage layer you would like to transition to in the
Transition B
drop-down menu.
(Note for Motion users:
Drag the footage layer up to the Transition B box.)
Animate your transition using the
Mix
slider from 0% to 100 percent. Set a keyframe for 0% where the transition should start, then set another at 100% for the end.
Modify the Transition
Click the
Lens Presets
button to see the same presets available via the Dashboard, albeit without the thumbnail previews. Select any preset to apply it. To give a sense of the range among these presets, below are Botany Bay (left), Quantum5 (center), and Atria (right).
Scale Min/Max
allows you to adjust the overall scale of the flare elements, but does not brighten the flare or change its position. Animate scale controls to simulate the adjustment of the focal length of a zoom lens. The slider range is 0 to 5, with a default of 1. High values increase the size of the flare elements.
Brightness Min/Max
adjusts flare brightness. Larger values cause the center of the flare to increase in size as it blooms or pushes toward white. A Brightness value of 0 is handled as a special case and does not render. Use this feature to set the flare on and off during an animation.
Brightness Ramp
allows you to control the range of the flare's brightness. The closer to 100% this control is set, the less brightness occurs in the transition.
In the following clip, we start Brightness Ramp at 100%, which is why the flare is so dim as it enters from the left. We keyframe into 25% at the mid-point, when the flare is brightest, then fall off to 50% by the time the flare exits at the right.
Use the
Saturation
slider to increase the glow interior's color intensity, or lower it under 100 to desaturate the color.
The
Color
picker control specifies a color for the light source. To simulate a blue light, for example, set the color to blue. Choose a lens color from a palette with the Color well, or use the eyedropper tool to sample a color from anywhere on your screen. Color affects hue and saturation values. A bright blue and dark blue color will give the same results. Neutral colors like dark gray or black will not darken the flare. As you increase the color's saturation, Color will override the individual colors of the flare effect's elements and sprites.
Path Angle
allows you to change the angle of the transition.
To help visualize this, we enabled Wireframe Preview (see below). We started with the Left to Right transition preset, which sets Path Angle at 0°, then we changed Path Angle to -35°, resulting in the upward path slope you observe here. Note how the size and color of the circle on the path reflects the flare's Brightness Ramp.
Path Width
approximates the effect of changing the weight of your aperture, which in turn impacts how the flare spreads along the transition edge.
With Wireframe Preview enabled, you can more easily visualize Path Width with the red and green circles shown below. Note that we also turned Wipe Feather (see next) to 0% to clearly demonstrate what having no feathering at the transition boundary looks like.
Turn the
Wipe Feather
slider up toward 100% to give a soft, feathery edge to the transition boundary.
Use the
Transition
drop-down to choose whether you want a Linear Wipe (shown in all our examples here) or Dissolve for the transition between the layers under the flare.
Manual Path Group:
To set your in/out points for the transition manually, turn on the
Manual In/Out Points
checkbox. This will override the Lens Preset menu in favor of the
Start Point
and
End Point
positional controls.
Select the
Blend Mode
from the drop-down to choose how the transition is composited.
Turn on the
Wireframe Preview
to preview and adjust the lens animation's path.
