Sapphire Plug-ins for After Effects: Glint

S_Glint

Generates star shaped glints at locations where the Source clip is brighter than the threshold. Lower the threshold parameter to produce glints in more areas. Adjust the size and brightness parameters to make different types of glints. Glints are best observed on dark images with a few bright spots.

In the Sapphire Lighting effects submenu.

Inputs:

Source: The current layer. The input clip that determines the glint locations and colors.

Background: Defaults to None. The clip to combine the glints with. If no background is given, the Source is also used as the Background.

Matte: Defaults to None. If provided, the source glint colors are scaled by this input. A monochrome matte can be used to choose a subset of Source areas that will generate glints. A color matte can be used to selectively adjust the glint colors in different regions. The matte is applied to the source before the glints are generated so it will not clip the resulting glints.

Parameters:

Brightness: Default: 1, Range: 0 or greater.
Scales the brightness of all the glints.

Scale Colors: Default rgb: [1 1 1].
Scales the color of the glints. The colors and brightnesses of the glints are also affected by the Source and Matte inputs.

Brightness X: Default: 1, Range: 0 or greater.
Scales the brightness of the horizontal glint rays.

Brightness Y: Default: 1, Range: 0 or greater.
Scales the brightness of the vertical glint rays.

Brightness Diag1: Default: 1, Range: 0 or greater.
Scales the brightness of the diagonal rays from top right to bottom left.

Brightness Diag2: Default: 1, Range: 0 or greater.
Scales the brightness of the diagonal rays from top left to bottom right.

Threshold: Default: 0.7, Range: 0 to 1.
Glints are generated from locations in the source clip that are brighter than this value. A value of 0.9 causes glints at only the brightest spots. A value of 0 causes glints for every non-black area.

Threshold Add Color: Default rgb: [0 0 0].
This can be used to raise the threshold on a specific color and thereby reduce the glints generated on areas of the source clip containing that color.

Threshold Blur: Default: 2, Range: 0 or greater.
Increase to smooth out the areas creating glints. This can be used to eliminate glints generated from small speckles or to simply soften the glints. Increasing this may put more highlights below the threshold and darken the resulting glints, but you can decrease the Threshold parameter to compensate.

Size: Default: 180, Range: 0 or greater.
Scales the length of all glint rays. This and all the size parameters can be adjusted using the Size Widget. Note that a zero glint size still enhances the bright areas; set the brightness parameter to zero if you want to pass the Source through unchanged.

Size X: Default: 1, Range: 0 or greater.
Scales the length of the horizontal glint rays.

Size Y: Default: 1, Range: 0 or greater.
Scales the length of the vertical glint rays.

Size Diag1: Default: 0.75, Range: 0 or greater.
Scales the length of the diagonal rays from top right to bottom left.

Size Diag2: Default: 0.75, Range: 0 or greater.
Scales the length of the diagonal rays from top left to bottom right.

Size Red: Default: 0.5, Range: 0 or greater.
Scales the length of the red component of the rays. If the red, green, and blue sizes are equal the glints will be uniform in color and will match the color of the source clip. If they are not equal, the glint colors can vary along the lengths of the rays.

Size Green: Default: 1, Range: 0 or greater.
Scales the length of the green component of the rays.

Size Blue: Default: 1.5, Range: 0 or greater.
Scales the length of the blue component of the rays.

Affect Alpha: Default: 1, Range: 0 or greater.
If this value is positive the output Alpha channel will include some opacity from the glints. The maximum of the red, green, and blue glint brightness is scaled by this value and combined with the background Alpha at each pixel.

Glint From Alpha: Default: 0, Range: 0 to 1.
Set to 1 to generate glints from the alpha channel of the source input instead of the RGB channels. In this case the glints will not pick up color from the source and will typically be brighter. Values between 0 and 1 interpolate between using the RGB and the Alpha.

Glint Under Source: Default: 0, Range: 0 to 1.
Set to 1 to composite the Source input over the glints.

Source Opacity: Default: 1, Range: 0 to 1.
Scales the opacity of the Source input when combined with the glints. This does not affect the generation of the glints themselves.

Bg Brightness: Default: 1, Range: 0 or greater.
Scales the brightness of the background. This parameter only has an effect if the background input is provided, and is visible due to a partially transparent Source image or a reduced Source Opacity parameter value.

Invert Matte: Check-box, Default: off.
If on, inverts the Matte input so the effect is applied to areas where the Matte is black instead of white. This has no effect unless the Matte input is provided.

Expand Borders: Check-box, Default: off.
If enabled, transparent borders are added to the input image before processing. This allows the result to include soft edges beyond the original image size. When off, the effect only occurs within the frame and the result will retain an edge at the borders. This parameter does not appear in FCP or DF because those applications don't support image expansion.

Opacity: Popup menu, Default: Normal.
Determines the method used for dealing with opacity/transparency.

All Opaque: Use this option to render slightly faster when the input image is fully opaque with no transparency (alpha=1).

Normal: Process opacity normally.

As Premult: Process as if the image is already in premultiplied form (colors have been scaled by opacity). This option also renders slightly faster than Normal mode, but the results will also be in premultiplied form, which is sometimes less correct.

Show Size: Check-box, Default: off.
Turns on or off the screen user interface for adjusting the size parameters.This parameter only appears on AE and Premiere, where on-screen widgets are supported.

S_Glint

Inputs:

Parameters:

See Also: