After Effects CS6 Tutorial - 101 - Point Lights Video Lecture | Adobe After Effects CS6: Complete Course from Novice to Pro - IT & Software

hey everybody welcome back to another
After Effects cs6 tutorial
I'm your host buddy Blackford and this
tutorial I want to go over point lights
and I wanted to show you something real
quick that doesn't really have to do
with lights but I just wanted to show
you this cool website I found out while
doing these tutorials it was called
unsplash and it's just unsplash.com
and I'll go to the top real quick and
it's just free high-resolution photos
you can just do whatever you want with
them and you don't even have to credit
them if you don't want to but I think
this website is pretty cool I'm gonna
take some of my photos off here and use
them in After Effects to show you guys
what's going on here see I pulled this
guy out of there because I thought it
would be useful in this section here but
that's for that I just thought that was
a really cool resource that you guys
could use if you were wondering how to
get some nice high resolution photos to
work on and you can follow along if you
would like so I created a point light
here by going to layer new light and
then I just changed the light type to
point so now I'm going to double click
on my point light here and go over some
point light is all about so a point
light you can think of it as a light
bulb that's just flying around in space
pretty much it's just hanging there in
space no lampshade on it or anything
just the bulb and it has some fall-off
just like a spotlight but it is let it
catch shadows and everything and you can
use it to effect a broader area than a
spotlight so you can also change the
color if you want to so if you want to
set like a kind of a more dreary I guess
mood a dreamy mood I guess put it in
that color
actually purple is kind of dreamy
so you can change the intensity here and
if you put it down to zero without any
other lights in there it's going to be
nothing so the intensity can be really
high and if you put it really high it
can blow some of the colors out and it
also has fall-off like I mentioned where
you can make the fall-off going out like
this
and it creates a vignette on your scene
and then you have the distance and
everything just like the spotlight the
point light also cast shadows you must
remember to have cache shadows on on the
layer that is in front and to have
except shadows on on the layer that you
want the shadows to be casted onto so
I'll just go over that real quick for
you now open up the this is my picture
that I'm using is called the guy
standing and I'm gonna twirl down and
come into the material options and you
want to make sure that except shadows is
on and except lights is on and this is
for casting shadows I'm gonna turn on
this layer this layer right here and I
have this object that's in in front a
little in between the light and the
background layer and I'm gonna twirl
down here to the material options and
make sure that cache shadows is on now I
can come into my light options and
change the casting shadows onto on wait
for it to render out a second and now
I've got a shadow that is being cast you
can change your darkness of your shadow
and the diffusion of the shadow which is
more like kind of like the blurriness of
the shadow and how far out it light kind
of like goes so I'm gonna turn the
shadows off
because it doesn't look good
when it's like blessed I like that on
two here's just an example and a point
light can act sort of like a spotlight
if you if you want it to by moving the
position of the light so I'm going to
turn off this vector here and I'm going
to bring this point light really close
to the picture by going into two views
and this picture here I'll go to the top
view and we'll just bring it closer
using the position now we have here is
kind of like a different kind of light
going on here so maybe you want to
superimpose a moon in the back here and
you can put this light right on and it
barely kind of like lights up the scene
now if I want to change my intensity
down it's going to only light up like
certain parts now it's not as pretty
it's not as I can't think of the word
it's not as constrained I guess as the
spotlight where you can have like the
spotlight be like right on this and have
like a circle right here but it does
kind of illuminate only a little bit if
you pull it close I pull really close
then that's about as good as you can get
there and if you go past it it turns all
the way black because now it's not being
illuminated anymore if you move back
more of more of this will get
illuminated until you move too far back
and then obviously it gets less
illuminated as you're farther back now
you can just turn up the intensity if
you need to go farther back to create
like new effects new looking cool
looking effects with your light now
that's all that there is for the
spotlight settings and how spotlights
work so in the next tutorial I'll go
for the parallel light and we can see
how that works differently than the spot
and cone lights so look forward to
seeing you at that tutorial leave a
comment if you have any comments you
want to let me know of thumbs up the
videos if you liked them and thumbs down
them if you really really hate them
so and leave me some feedback if you
really really hate them and I don't mind
I take constructive criticism just fine
but in an industry for a while and
pretty much everything you do is never
right on the first try so there's always
criticism and just take it with an open
mind and don't fall in love with your
work because you know you're gonna have
to change it all the time so I'll see
you guys later on the next tutorial and
have a good day