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If your compositing an after effects, or more specifically, 3D compositing
an after effects, then using lights is most likely part of your every day work flow.
And what you can see here is that I have a basic 3D comp where we have
a ground plane, and let's call that the stage for now,
and we have three layers of numbers that are set at different distances apart.
And what I'm going to do is use a light--a point light--to illuminate them.
So if I do a quick RAM preview on this, what you'll see is using the standard settings,
that even as the light decays, the intensity,
even with the number 3, which is the furthest away, is the same.
And that's fine, but perhaps I actually want to gradually reduce the light intensity
as the objects get further away and actually change the look of this.
The issue is I want it to mimic natural light, but natural light doesn't maintain
a consistent intensity over an infinite distance--it decays or falls off.
So now, in After Effects CS5.5, we have new light falloff options
which can really improve the look of working with lights in 3D space.
So if I use this same layer--let's go up to our layer menu here--and go to light settings,
and if I go up to Falloff, you'll see that we have two options.
Now, immediately, when I turn on the smooth option, you can see that where we are in this
comp, suddenly the number 3 is disappearing.
That's because here the intensity is decreasing in a completely linear
fashion, starting and ending at specific distances in pixels.
And this is great, but this isn't still truly mimicking natural lighting.
If we want the real natural light effect, we're going to go under Falloff
and choose Inverse Square Clamped.
And now when we go ahead--let's go ahead and okay this--Ram preview--you
can see that this truly mimics the natural characteristics of light.
This will create more natural lighting for 3D scenes, although light layers
can still provide infinitely steady illumination to 3D layers.
And the best thing about this is it allows you to create the falloff with the same light types,
intensities, and shadow casting settings that you've already been using in After Effects.
A truly welcomed addition, and dare I say, a brilliant addition to After Effects CS5.5.
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