Dynamic rays behind text.

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In this tutorial you will study how to create incredible special effect with help of one module from AlphaStar plug-ins bundle. This lesson says how to create beautiful rays which shine behind of some text, logo, silhouette or any another object. You can animate the movement of light source and decorate your video with fantastical and professional lighting effects.

For reproduce steps of this tutorial you should have installed AlphaStar plug-ins bundle on your computer. Download software you can here.

Create a new project (Ctrl+Alt+N). Create a new composition (Ctrl+N). Create a new text layer. Select the menu item Layer/New/Text (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+T). Adjust position, size, font and color of text as you want. (See Pic.1.) Now you can apply the effect AlphaStar - Rays. You can find it in menu Effects/AlphaPlugins. If you haven't this plug-ins yet then you can download it from here. Just download it, launch installer and follow instructions.

Pic.1. Text layer

Pic.2. Deffault settings

You will see some like the Pic 2. It is too far from our aim yet. Don't shy. After few simple steps you will estimate the power of this plug-in. Check that the Path dropdown listbox is selected as None. Set next list box Standard path as Contour alpha channel. Now the contour of our text will be automatically traced and a vector mask will be constructed. You will see a result like as Pic.3.

Pic.3. Automatically contour tracing

Pic.4. Centripetal rays direction

Now you should select a direction for rays. Select the item Centripetal in Orientation listbox. Now your picture looks as Pic.4. Now it is time to adjust appearance of rays. Go to Geometry list of parameters. Select Type4 in dropdown list Type. Set Size parameter as 100. Set Width as 127. You can see an intermediate result like Pic.5.

Pic.5. Geometry parameters

Now we should adjust color and intensity of our rays.

Go to in Color parameters list.Set Value parameter as 13.You can self adjust such parameters as Color dispersion, Fading, Color oscillation and etc. for receive more impressive picture.

Now we should set a mixing mode. Find the last parameter Mix with original in list of parameters. Set this parameter as Add. You can keep this parameter as Replace and use build-in After Effects means for layer mixing. Just use two layers. One layer with original text and second layer with applied effect. And use After Effects blending tools for mixing this layers. (Use menu Layers/Blending Mode).

Now we should animate the movement of our source of light. Go to in parameters list Source of rays. Find the parameter Center of centripetal. Go to in first frame of your composition and adjust the position of this parameter as you want (Dont forget to do this parameter animated). Go to in hte last frame of your composition and also adjust the position of Center of centripetal. Render your composition.

As last step you can set the parameter Random seed in parameter list Source of rays for adjusting chaotic rays' picture.

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In this tutorial we have studied several basic approaches how to work with plug-in module AlphaStar - Rays. You studied how to create the interesting lighting effects then a light source is moving behind of text layer. I hope you can discover many helpful features of this outstanding plug-in.

See also In this tutorial you will know how to create amazing stars trace after a wizard wand movement. For reproducing this tutorial you should use AlphaStar - Starsfall plug-in module for After Effects. This lesson is very good illustration of this plug-in's possibilities and you can see that the work with this software is very simple and easy. See tutorail... In this lesson you will study how to add beautiful moving stars on edges of any opaque object, like text, typing, subscribe, logo, silhouette or something like it. Also you will be familiarized how to adjust basic parameters of AlphaStar - Starsfall plug-in and you will understand the main idea how to use them and which parameters are responsible for what effects. See tutorail...

You can download the freshest release of AlphaStar plug-ins bundle for After Effects here