Working with Lens Effects Filters

The Add Image Filter Event dialog box's drop-down list has several Lens Effects filters. These filters include Lens Effects Flare, Focus, Glow, and Highlight. Each of these filters is displayed and discussed in the sections that follow, but several parameters are common to all of them.

Many lens effects parameters in the various Lens Effects setup dialog boxes can be animated such as Size, Hue, Angle, and Intensity. These are identified in the dialog boxes by green arrow buttons to the right of the parameter fields. These buttons work the way the Animate button in the main interface works. To animate a parameter, just click the corresponding arrow button, move the Time Slider to a new frame, and change the parameter. Figure 48.13 shows how these buttons look in the Lens Effects Flare dialog box.

Figure 48.13: Green arrow buttons in the Lens Effects Flare dialog box identify the parameters that can be animated for this effect.

Each Lens Effects dialog box also includes a preview pane in the upper-left corner with three buttons underneath. Clicking the Preview button renders all enabled lens effects in the preview pane. The VP Queue button renders the current Video Post queue. Using the preview pane, you can get an idea of how the final output should look. With the Preview button enabled, any parameter changes in the dialog box are automatically updated in the preview pane. The Update button enables you to manually update the preview. You can right-click the Preview pane to change its resolution for faster updates at lower resolutions.

Tip 

If the VP Queue button is enabled, then a default Lens Effects image is displayed. Using this image, you can play around with the various settings while the Preview mode is enabled to gain an idea of what the various settings do.

You can save the settings in each Lens Effect dialog box as a separate file that can be recalled at any time. These saved files have an .LZF extension and can be saved and loaded with the Save and Load buttons at the bottom left of the dialog box.

Adding flares

The Lens Effects Flare dialog box includes controls for adding flares of various types to an image. This dialog box includes a main preview pane and several smaller preview panes for each individual effect. The check boxes below these smaller preview panes let you enable or disable these smaller panes.

Under the main preview pane are several global commands, and to their right is a series of tabbed panels that contain the settings for each individual effect type. The first panel is labeled Prefs and sets which effects are rendered (on and off scene), which are squeezed, which have the Inferno noise filter applied, and which have an Occlusion setting.

The settings for the individual flare types are included in the subsequent tabbed panels. They include Glow, Ring, A Sec, M Sec, Rays, Star, Streak, and Inferno. These tabbed panels include gradient color bars for defining the Radial Color, Radial Transparency, Circular Color, Circular Transparency, and Radial Size. Each of these tabbed panels has different settings, but Figure 48.14 shows the tabbed panels for the Glow and Ring effects.

Figure 48.14: The Glow and Ring tabbed panels are representative of all the different lens effect settings.

The gradient colors found in these tabbed panels are controlled by flags that appear under the gradient band. Double-clicking a flag opens a Color Selector dialog box where you can select a new color. Dragging these flags moves the gradient color. You can add a new flag to the band by clicking under the gradient away from the existing flags. The active flag is colored green. To delete flags, select them and press the Delete key. By right-clicking the gradient band, you can access a pop-up menu of options that let you access several options for the selected gradient color. You can even load and save gradients. Gradients are saved as files with the .DGR extension.

The rightmost tabbed panel, shown in Figure 48.15, is labeled Inferno and provides a way to add noise to any of the effects. The Prefs tabbed panel includes a check box for enabling the Inferno settings for each effect. Inferno noise can be set to three different states: Gaseous, Fiery, and Electric. If your effect is looking too perfect, you can add some randomness to it with the Inferno option.

Figure 48.15: The Inferno tabbed panel includes options for enabling noise for the various flare effects.

Adding focus

The Lens Effects Focus dialog box, shown in Figure 48.16, includes options for adding Scene Blur, Radial Blur, and Focal Node effects. If you click the Select button, the Select Focal Object dialog box opens and lets you choose an object to act as the focal point for the scene.

Figure 48.16: You can use the Lens Effects Focus dialog box to blur an image.

You can also set values for the Horizontal Focal Loss and Vertical Focal Loss or enable the Lock button to lock these two parameters together. The Focal Range and Focal Limit values determine the distance from the focal point where the blurring begins or reaches full strength. You can also set the blurring to affect the Alpha channel.

Adding glow

The Lens Effects Glow dialog box, shown in Figure 48.17, enables you to apply glows to the entire scene or to specific objects based on the Object ID or Effects ID. Other Source options include Unclamped, Surf Norm (Surface Normals), Mask, Alpha, Z High, and Z Lo. This dialog box also enables you to filter the glow using options such as Edge, Perimeter Alpha, Perimeter, Bright, and Hue.

Figure 48.17: Use the Lens Effects Glow dialog box to make objects and scenes glow.

Additional tabbed panels under the preview pane let you control the Preferences, Gradients, and Inferno settings. In the Preferences tabbed panel, you can set the color of the glow to be based on the Gradient tabbed panel-defined gradients, based on Pixel or a User-defined color. You can also set the Intensity in the Preference tabbed panel.

Adding highlights

The Lens Effects Highlight dialog box, shown in Figure 48.18, includes the same Properties, Preferences, and Gradient tabbed panels as the Glow dialog box, except that the effects it produces are highlights instead of glows. The Geometry tabbed panel includes options for setting the Size and Angle of the highlights and how they rotate away from the highlighted object.

Figure 48.18: Use the Lens Effects Highlight dialog box to add highlights to scene objects.

Tutorial: Making a halo shine

When it comes to glowing objects, I think of radioactive materials, celestial objects like comets and meteors, and heavenly objects like angels. In this tutorial, I'm leaning toward heaven in an attempt to create some glory. But because I couldn't locate an angel, we use a simple halo.

To add highlights to a halo using the Video Post interface, follow these steps:

1. Open the  Glowing halo.max file from the Chap 48 directory on the DVD.

   This file contains a head model and a halo. The halo object has been set to the G-Buffer Object Channel of 1 in its Object Properties dialog box.

2. Choose Rendering Video Post to open the Video Post interface. Click the Add Scene Event button on the toolbar.

   The Add Scene Event dialog box appears.

3. Type a name for the event in the Label text field, and click OK. The event is added to the Queue pane.

4. Select the halo object in the viewport and click the Add Image Filter Event button on the toolbar (or press Ctrl+F) to open the associated dialog box. Select Lens Effects Highlight from the dropdown list, and click the Setup button.

   The Lens Effects Highlight dialog box appears.

5. Click the VP Queue button followed by the Preview button to see the rendered scene. In the Properties tabbed panel, select the Object ID option and set the Object ID to 1 to match the G-Buffer channel for the halo object. In the Filter section, enable the All option. In the Preferences tabbed panel, set the Size to 3.0, Points to 4, the Color option to Pixel, and Intensity to 100. Then click OK.

6. Click the Execute Sequence button on the toolbar (or press Ctrl+R), and then click Render in the Execute Video Post dialog box.

Figure 48.19 shows the completed halo in all its shining glory.

Figure 48.19: Using the Lens Effects Highlight dialog box, you can add shining highlights to objects like this halo.

Adding backgrounds and filters using Video Post

As an example of the Video Post interface in action, we composite a background image of a waterfall with a rendered scene of an airplane model created by Viewpoint Datalabs. We then add some filter effects.

To composite an image with the Video Post interface, follow these steps:

1. Open the  Airplane over waterfall.max file from the Chap 48 directory on the DVD.

   This file includes an airplane model. The directory also includes an image called  waterfall.tif that is used later.

2. Open the Video Post interface by choosing Rendering Video Post.

3. Add a background image to the queue by clicking the Add Image Input Event button (or press Ctrl+I). Click the Files button. Locate the  waterfall.tif image from the Chap 48 directory on the DVD, and click OK. Then click OK again to exit the Add Image Input Event dialog box.

4. Next add the rendered image by clicking the Add Scene Event button and selecting the Perspective view. Name the event rendered airplane. Click the Render Options button to open the Render Scene panel and select the Renderer panel. Disable the Anti-Aliasing option in the MAX Default Scanline Renderer rollout in the Renderer panel, and click OK. Click OK again to exit the Edit Scene Event dialog box.

5. Select both the background (waterfall.tif) and rendered airplane (Perspective) events, and click the Add Image Layer Event button (or press Ctrl+L). Select the Alpha Compositor option, and click OK.

   This composites the background image and the rendered image together by removing all the green background from the rendered scene.

6. To run the processing, click the Execute Sequence button on the toolbar (or press Ctrl+R) to open the Execute Video Post interface, select the Single output range option, click the 640 × 480 size button, and click Render.

Figure 48.20 shows the final composited image.

Figure 48.20: The airplane in this image is rendered, and the background is composited.