Lens Effects Highlight Filter

Command entry:Video Post toolbar

(Add Image Filter Event)

Choose Lens Effects Highlight from Filter Plug-In list.

Setup

The Lens Effects Highlight dialog lets you assign bright, star-shaped highlights. Use it on objects that have shiny materials. For example, a shiny, red car might show highlights in bright sunlight.

Example of highlights

Another good example of an effect perfect for Highlight is the creation of pixie dust. If you create a particle system and animate it moving in a straight line with small four-point Highlight stars applied to each pixel, it will look a lot like twinkling magic.

The Lens Effects Highlight module is multi-threaded and will take advantage of multi-processing machines, making it one of, if not the fastest highlight routines available.

Procedures

To save your highlight settings:

You can save all of your lens highlight settings to a file, so you can reload them any time. Lens Effects Highlight settings are saved as LZH file (.lzh). Do one of the following:

Click the Reset button.
This resets Lens Effects Highlight to its default settings.
Click the Load button.
This displays a Windows-standard file open dialog from which you can select the settings file you want to load.
Click the Save button.
This displays a Windows-standard Save As dialog in which you specify a directory and filename.

Interface

When you select Lens Effects Highlight from the Image Filter Event drop-down list and click Setup, the Highlight dialog is displayed.

The Lens Effects Highlight interface is almost identical to the Glow module, with a large preview window, and tabs to control every aspect of your highlight effects.

Preview group

Preview window: Lets you quickly preview the glow effect. The preview window is multi-threaded to take advantage of systems with multiprocessors, and updates every time you make a change to any of the glow settings that might affect the scene.
Preview: Activates a generic cross star filter so you can quickly set up a Highlight effect. However, as with the Glow module, it is more effective seeing your entire scene and how your effect will interact with your geometry.
VP Queue: Lets you preview the scene in the Video Post queue. Preview must be selected for the VP Queue function to work.

Highlight Control tabs

Similar to the Glow settings, Highlight is also broken down into tabbed sections for fine control over each aspect of the Highlight effect. The four tabs are:

Highlight Properties

Highlight Geometry

Highlight Preferences

Lens Effects Gradients

Button group

Reset: Resets Lens Effects Highlight to its default settings.
Load: Displays a Windows-standard file open dialog from which you can select the settings file you want to load.
Save: Displays a Windows-standard Save As dialog in which you specify a directory and filename. Lens Effects Highlight settings are saved as LZH files.

Highlight Properties
The Lens Effects Highlight properties enable you to determine which parts of your scene will have highlights applied to them, as well as how the highlights are to be applied.
Highlight Geometry
The Geometry panel is where you set the initial rotation of the highlights as well as how the elements are affected over time. The Geometry panel consists of three areas: Effect, Vary, and Rotate.
Highlight Preferences
The Preferencespaneldefines the size and number of points on the highlight, occlusion settings, and whether or not it affects the Z-Buffer or alpha channels.

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