Lighting Effects

        This is not intended to be a step-by-step tutorial (I assume that you are an Anim8or user), but a guideline and a challenge for your imagination. First look at some images, later I'll describe the "tools" responsible for the effects. If you are passionate about lighting effects, I am convinced you can do much better than me!

        Let's try to improve a scene using filters, and I mean almost real objective-lens filters. The Shark-scene, as you can find it in Anim8or's Manual, is down-loadable from Elias Marzane's anim8ortrade.

Initial shark-scene

First, a little make-up by setting a background color for the environment, enabling a partially transparent fog,  reorienting the lights and adding a shadow.

Shark-scene with fog and shadow

Now, if we would like to decrease the transparency of the water so that even the foreground shark to be faded and the background one to remain still visible, we couldn't manage it by setting the fog parameters (which already starts from the camera). We need a nonzero origin value for the fog. Placing a tiny neutral filter in front of the camera,

Neutral filter, adding fog in foreground

covering its whole field, can do this. Setting the transparency of the filter, we adjust the starting value for the fog.  Using colored filters, we can change the hue of the image. Our water, even with reduced transparency, seems too limpid, needs some turbidity. It's begging for micro-plankton! So, let's add a spotted filter.
 

Shark-scene with red filter

Shark-scene with yellow filter

Micro-plankton (seen only in high-res)

Evidently, a single filter object can act as a color filter, transparency filter, texture projector (as the spotted filter does) and so on.
 

Shark-scene with glow filter

In order to look great, our scene needs some diffuse light. Let's try a glow filter!  It is much better. The glow filter has its own color (yellow) and has an amount of self-illumination (ambient) to light up the image. See the set-up.

Hemispherical glow filter

Tilted cylindrical filter

Now, we remove the glow filter and add volume light, using a cylindrical filter. See the set-up. We have got a more convincing underwater scene.

Click the image to enlarge

High specular value filter

By changing the material parameters of the filter we can set the volume light effect.

Low specular value filter

Small movements of the filter may afect considerably the image and that is one of the possibilities for animating the effect.

Ending the diving, we are ready to jump right into the fire!

No filter

The candle's flare was done with a shiny surface, user lights and fog, inspired by the superb spectrum effect of Wladyslaw Strugala's rainbow. Adding a glow filter, adding one more, some rays (with a transparent shiny cylinder-made star object)  and finally a discrete anamorphic effect (a simple blue

Adding a glow

Adding a second glow

Adding a ray-device

Anamorphic Click to enlarge

See on the left the setup of the scene. Moving the candle's flame along with the effects' source objects and using a transparency filter sliding in front of the camera, we are able to animate the effects. Skinning the flame would have given a more realistic look.