the custom light flares effect was added in the last major release of hitfilm pro
this effect gives you full control to create your own light flare
with tons of customizable settings there are over 60 pre-made presets ready for you to use
and you can dive into each one and adjust every element to make it your own
the original light flares effect requires the stacking of multiple effects to create complex
results and can be limited in the customization you're able to achieve but the new custom light
flares effect allows for much more complex effects all within a single control panel
let's take a look at this new effect and how it can add some flair to your footage
custom light flares comes with over 60 built-in presets to get you started these presets were
created based on reference material of real lens flares and you may recognize some of the
flares inspired by popular movies and shows let's apply one of these presets to some video footage
here is a cool clip of a car with the headlights on i've already gone ahead and tracked a 2d point
layer to each headlight which will allow the light flare to follow the movement click the card
on screen to learn about motion tracking to add some light flares create a new black plain layer
then apply the custom light flares effect set the layers blend mode to add to blend the flare
with your footage i'll attach my flare to one of the track points and zero out its position
to choose a preset and customize the flare click the options button you can select a preset and see
how it looks in the preview window i like the look of the end game preset select it and hit apply
we have now enhanced the bright appearance of the headlights with a custom flare i don't like
the look of this element that quickly rotates around we can easily get rid of it by adjusting
the preset click the options button again this time going over to the controls tab
this panel contains all of the different elements that make up our flare we'll go more into these
settings later on but for now we just need to find the element we don't like and hide it from view
there the distracting element is gone i can now duplicate the flare effect
attach it to the other headlight and maybe reduce its intensity and scale a little
the built-in presets cover a wide variety of flare styles and looks but if you have
something specific in mind you can create your own custom flare from scratch every flare is made up
of various pieces called elements and there are three element types to choose from spot
rays and iris a spot is a bright point within the flare and is most often used as the center hotspot
rays are the lines that emanate outward from the center an iris element represents the flare
reflecting off the inside of a camera lens and can come in many shapes and sizes there
are also various element presets for quickly getting a specific look when creating a custom
flare it is often a good idea to look at reference material and pick apart the different small pieces
that make up the final flare referencing real light flares will help your own flare to look
more realistic this is how javert created many of the built-in presets every element has their
own controls to fully customize the shape size brightness color and behavior of that element
you can add radial deformation to add variation radial masks to control the
shape and even dynamic transformations to alter the flare based on its position within the frame
the iris element comes with some real world textures
to add even more detail and realism preventing the flares from looking computer generated
there are far too many controls to explain in one video so i'd recommend checking out the hitfilm
reference manual linked in the video description when you are happy with your flare effect you
can save it as your own custom preset so you can load up those same settings in any project
to save your preset right click the preset you started with and choose save as now
your preset will appear in your preset browser whenever you use the custom light flares effect
now that we know the basics of the custom light flares effect let's look at how to recreate a
light flare from a movie this image is from the film close encounters of the third kind and was
the inspiration for one of javert's presets the key to recreating a flare like this is to break
it down into small pieces instead of looking at the flare as a whole the first three elements are
all spot elements which create the center hotspot of the flare you can adjust the gamma for a more
realistic falloff on the glow and can use the radial deformation feature to create light rays
the next five elements are all rays elements to create the main horizontal streaks you can create
variation in color and brightness by using duplicate elements with different settings
additional elements can also be used to introduce more color to the effect
the next few elements are all iris elements each adjusted to replicate a different small
detail from the reference material the color gradient slider goes from the center of the
iris to the outer edge this can be used to add color variation or to create these ring shapes
for anamorphic flares make sure to use the aspect ratio control to squeeze or stretch the elements
every element also has its own blend mode
giving you further control over how each element combines with the rest
there are many different controls to customize each element allowing you to
replicate the smallest detail of your favorite flares if you know of any unique lens flares
from a film or tv show that you'd like added to the software leave a comment down below
if you want your light flares to truly shine try out the custom light flares effect in hitfilm pro
if you don't own pro you can still try the effect for free in the hitfilm pro demo
feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions or if you learned something new
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