Crumble's ultimate lights wraps - AE

When should I use a light wrap?

Light wraps are commonly used against bright backgrounds, skies, fire video effects and any other intense sources of illumination. This can be added with the motivation of improving the realism of a scene, as a bright source of light (such as an explosion) will carry excessive luminant energy that leaks into adjacent pixels. This means that when a particular area of an explosion is being obscured by a foreground, its colors may still influence the pixel’s final output due to bloom, illumination and fog scattering.

An artist may also want to add a light-wrap for stylistic purposes to visually exaggerate the intensity of a source of light. For example, a dragon breath can be given a stronger light wrap to communicate its deadly heat; or the opening doorway of a UFO blinding the onlookers to reinforce their mysterious nature. Digitally, a pixel can only reach a maximum luminance of 1 (white), so to create a sense of limitless intensity, the implied brightness is reinforced by a light-wrap.

How to create a light wrap in After Effects

Crate’s Light Wrap generates light-wraps at blazing fast speeds. While most light-wrap After Effects tutorial videos require a dozen individual steps to complete, Crate’s Light Wrap generates these optical effects instantly.

Begin by installing the plugin to your Windows or Mac plugin directory:
Windows:      Extract plugin to C:\Program Files\Adobe\Common\Plug-ins\7.0\MediaCore
Mac:                Extract plugin to Applications/Adobe After Effects/Plug-in

Open Adobe After Effects, and in your composition, identify your background (the source of light) and the foreground (what the light-wrap will interact with).

The plugin then requires you to pre-compose these two layers, so that they can be correctly aligned. Once that’s done, apply Crumble's Light Wrap to your foreground layer.