Night Flight, Part 2 : Lights, Camera, Adjustment Layer
[1],[2]
- Create a comp called "Final Comp", Pal D1/DV or NTSC D1/DV, if you prefer. Set the frame rate to match that of your first comp, and make it 100 frames in duration.
- Drag
"Landscape Comp" into "Final Comp" and turn on
the 3D switch (
) and
collapse geometrics is turned on. This gives the somewhat amazing
result of a layer containing 3D-space INSIDE ITSELF. This means that
the z-depth positions of the three planes (ground, cloud 1 and cloud
2) interact with the lights (which we will add in steps 5 and 6),
which also have different z-positions. - Add a new solid called "Camera Rotator" (100x100). Turn on the 3D switch. Set the rotation to 0 x -60.0°. For the Z Rotation, set keyframes first and last frames to 0 x 10.0°, 0 x -8.0°.
- Add
a Camera set to 50mm default Check "Enable Depth of Field".
Drag the pickwhip to "Camera Rotator" so that Camera Rotator
becomes the parent of Camera 1. Twirl down the Transform settings
of "Camera 1" and change the following:
- Point of Interest: -0.0, 144.0, 294.4
- Position: -0.0, 1067.8, -238.9 - Add a light called "350 Light". Set the intensity to 150 and the color to a light purple. Twirl down the Transform settings for "350 Light" and change the position to 0.0, 0.0, -1000. Make sure the option pulldown menu is set to "Parallel". If you think it looks dark, don't worry.
- Duplicate "350 Light". The new layer will be called "350 Light*". Change the Intensity to 50% and the Light Type to Ambient. Only one of the lights have a z-position (as the other is ambient). The position of the light is below the clouds. It's kind of interesting that both lights interact the way they do - only using one of them will be much darker than expected. In this final comp, one light is shining from above the clouds and the other light is beneath the clouds which gives an interesting effect. You will get the correct 3D parallax with the two clouds and ground moving differently in the camera view.
- Add an Adjustment layer to boost the levels. Layer > New > Adjustment Layer. Apply levels to the Adjustment Layer (Effect > Adjust > Levels). Adjust the middle triangle on the histogram until you reach your desired level.