After Effects CS6 Tutorial - 104 - Ambient Lights Video Lecture | Adobe After Effects CS6: Complete Course from Novice to Pro - IT & Software

hey everybody welcome to another
lighting tutorial in After Effects cs6
I'm your host
buddy Blackford and the last type of
light I want to go over with you is the
ambient light and ambient lights are
different than the point or spotlight
are parallel lights in the fact that
they don't cast shadows they don't have
a position that matters so if you move
them around they're not going to change
how the object is lit up when you move
the position and they don't have like a
direction or a cone or anything like
that so ambient light you can think of
as like the Sun and it's just gonna
light up everything in the entire scene
and no matter where it is so I'll bring
up an ambient light up to here lay our
new light and we're gonna change this to
ambient usually I like to use ambient
lights when I fit want to fill like a
scene that is maybe too dark or I have a
scene that's really bright for some
reason and I want to lower the amount of
light so I can suck out extra light so
I'll show you that so we got the ambient
light going on here maybe we just want
to change the color of the scene a
little bit so we can pick a different
color here here we go we pick a color
maybe we can go into red or something
like that I don't know why you wouldn't
really want too much of like a pink
scene so you can either brighten it up a
lot and if I do this this guy is pretty
much looking into something that's very
very bright and you can't even see the
background or you can make it so it's a
lot darker now since you can't count
shadows or you don't have any angles
intensity is the and color are the only
things that you can change in your light
settings so an ambient light is pretty
much best used
conjunction with another light so I'm
gonna create another light here and I'm
just gonna make it the spotlight and
I'll make it thirty percent and white
light and I'll name this one spotlight
and I don't need it to catch shadows or
anything like this and I don't need the
fall-off so I've got that spotlight
right there in the middle and if I turn
off this ambient light this is what it
looks like put it right on the guy now
everything else is dark black no I don't
want that but I still want this spot
light on this guy without having to mess
with everything else in the scene by
adding more lights and positioning them
or anything like that so I'm gonna
create this ambient light and adjust the
settings and maybe I'll give it like a
little bit of a darker increase the
intensity of this light I got to turn it
on so we're gonna decrease the intensity
now but now we have this spot light
still on this man but everything else
has been lit up also so that's the best
way to use your ambient lights not much
more to go over with ambient light no
matter where you don't even have a
choice to even put them anywhere if I
turn on down my light options I just get
intensity in color and there's nothing
else I can't even pick anything else so
that's all there is to ambient lights
their basic they're simple and they're
useful in conjunction mainly with other
lighting I guess I also wanted to show
you about how you can use an ambient
light to to lower the amount of
brightness in your scene so maybe you
have a scene where you've got a few
lights in there
and I'm gonna turn the turn this off you
have a few lights in there and your
client comes in and tells you that he
wants the scene to be a lot darker so
what are you going to go in and adjust
the the lighting so that the are you
gonna adjust all the other lights in
there so that the client or one by one
and take forever right in front of the
client are you gonna look like you know
what you're doing and just create an
ambient light and just darken the scene
so if you go into the negatives haven't
turned off again let's go back to our
ambient light now if I start going into
the negatives here it's gonna start
taking away some of the darkness in the
scene actually just gonna add darkness
and take away some of the light and
there we go for that now I wanted to
show one last thing with ambient lights
if you go ahead and change the color
here if you change it all the way the
black nothing's going to happen with
your ambient light no matter what you do
I can turn this up to a zillion and it
won't do anything because the light
isn't gonna do anything when it's black
it's black is the absence of light
actually so make sure you have at least
some lighting going on in your in your
scene there it has to be not exactly
black and that might be another way you
want to darken the scene is by making
your ambient light a little darker
instead of animating the intensity so
there's a few ways how to use ambient
lights and there's not much more to say
about it
so we'll end here thanks for watching
hopefully you guys learned a bit about
the different types of lights throughout
though the series of tutorials there and
then I'll go over a little bit more on
how to use your lights in more advanced
ways so see you guys in the next
tutorials have a good one