Help File:

After Effects Flashing Light Wall Kit Project

Created exclusively for VideoHive by Chris Zwar
Quick overview:

This After Effects project creates a flashing light wall based on simple wipe patterns
The kit includes about 120 pre-rendered patterns for you to edit and remix
The light wall can be adjusted in size, from 4 x 3 big lights to 100 x 56 small lights
The light wall can be masked to only illuminate specific shapes
The lights and background can have their colour changed
The project includes versions for both 16x9 HD and 4K resolutions
A separate After Effects project has also been included to show how the light wall animations
can be used in a 3D After Effects set

PLEASE NOTE: A video tutorial has been included in your purchase. Please watch it for
demonstrations on how to get the most out of this project.
Project Basics:
The After Effects project was created using CC 2014. A project for CS 6 and CS 5.5 has been included
but these have been converted from the CC 2014 version.
This project uses Video CoPilots Optical Flares plugin. While
its possible to use the project without the plugin, the results will
not look as good.
The 3D set project uses the Trapcode Lux plugin. Again its
possible to use the project without the Lux plugin but the results
will not look as good.
The main light wall project is based on simple black & white
patterns that are used to control the light wall. The project
includes about 120 pre-rendered patterns for you to use.
The key to a great result is to sequence and edit these patterns
together. You dont have to do this in After Effects you may find
it quicker and easier to work in an editing package such as
Premiere or Final Cut Pro. The supplied patterns are 512 x 288
resolution, which is low enough for great real-time performance
even on old machines.

When you open the project file you will see it has been organised into
folders. The top 3 folders contain the compositions that you work with:
The very top folder contains the project to render this is the final
animating light wall. There are versions for both HD and 4K resolutions.
The second folder contains the edited sequence that controls the light
wall. This composition is very low resolution 512 x 288. As noted
above, you may prefer to create your patterns with an editing app rather
than in After Effects if so, just import the rendered file from the edit
and drop it into this composition.

The third folder contains an optional composition that will mask out the overall shape of the lights that
turn on. This is useful if you want the lights to be different to a full rectangle, eg a circle, text, or even a
logo. The alpha channel of this composition is used to mask everything, so if you are bringing in a logo
then ensure it is on a transparent background. The mask generally only works well if you are using
smaller light sizes. By default, this composition has one layer in it for testing purposes that is turned off.
The colour of the mask / text / logo is not used only the alpha channel.

Project Settings:
The most important aspect of the project is to have an effective sequence of patterns to drive the light
wall animation. Please watch the included video tutorial for instructions and demonstrations.
The main composition, called FlashingLights_MasterComposite only has a few controls you need to
use. They are applied to the top layer in the composition the pink layer called Controls & Settings.
To see the controls, select the layer and press e.

Select the top layer and press e to reveal the controls for the project.
Note that even though the Light Array Size number appears red, you can still click on it to edit the
number. The red colour notes that an expression is limiting the number to between 1 and 16.
Keyframing this value will allow you to change the size of the lights in a single composition. Please note
that keyframing between different light array sizes may result in edge artefacts for a few frames after the
keyframe. This can occasionally happen because when any light bulb turns off, it fades down over
several frames. If the size of the array changes as a light bulb is fading down the glow will be out of
alignment for a few frames. If you do want to keyframe the size of the array, it is recommended that
keyframes are aligned with wipe patterns that are either full-on or full-off.
.
The size of the lights is controlled by the Light Array Size slider, with a number from 1 to 16.
Size 1 has the largest lights (12 lights in a 4 x 3 array) while size 16 has the smallest (5,600 lights in a 100
x 56 array). The number of lights in each size is listed in the table below.

Left to right: size 1 , size 7 and size 16

The size of the light wall will have a big impact on the render times. The more lights there are the
longer the render times. When using large lights the render times are fast, but if you are using small
lights then the render times can be very slow. The rendering time is almost entirely due to the optical
flares plugin, which will take a long time to render each frame when there are many lights on.
If you are using the 4K composition then the render times will be even slower again. I would not
recommend using a light array size larger than 9 when rendering 4K, as rendering is very slow.
Even when using the HD resolution comp, the smallest sized light wall has 5,600 lights on it and this
can take over a minute per frame to render! If youre working with the smaller lights then youll find it
much faster to turn the optical flares plugin off while doing previews and tests, then turning it on for the
final render.
It can be useful to know the resolution of the light array when creating animating patterns such as grids
or checkerboards. The 16 different light array sizes were constructed using two different aspect ratios.
Some of the grids are based on horizontal numbers of lights that increase by 10 eg 10,20,30, and so
on up to 100. The others are based on vertical numbers of lights that are multiples of 9 (as in 16 x 9).
These two methods have slightly different aspect ratios and the results have been combined together
from smallest to largest so some of the grids are similar in size, but slightly different shapes.

The actual resolution of each grid, and the number of lights it contains can be seen in this table:
Slider value
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16

Lights in X
4
8
10
16
20
30
32
40
48
50
60
64
70
80
96
100

Lights in Y
3
5
6
9
12
17
18
22
27
28
36
36
40
45
54
56

Total lights
12
40
60
144
240
510
576
880
1296
1400
2160
2304
2800
3600
5184
5600

The Light Colour will change the colour of the lights this is a simple colour selector. When choosing
a colour, the lightness and saturation values can have a big impact on the end result. If your animation
is looking washed out or lacking detail, you may find that making the colour darker and more saturated
produces a better looking result. While it is counter-intuitive, darker colours mean more contrast so the
lights end up looking brighter! The Background colour adjusts the colour of the background behind
the lights.

Different light colours and background colours. Darker colours produce stronger results.
The colour values can be keyframed in the normal manner if you wish to animate colours over time.

Advanced Notes:
Glow: The project has a control to change the colours of the lights, but this can have a big impact on
the appearance of the lens flares and the final result. Depending on the colour you choose, you may
want to tweak the amount of glow. There are 3 adjustment layers at the top of the composition that all
affect the amount of overall glow. Adjusting their settings or just their opacity can help restore
detail if the image is too bright, or boost it if the lights are too dark.

There are 2 adjustment layers with the glow effect applied and another that brightens the overall
image. Adjust the settings and opacity to suit your needs and colour schemes.
Manual control: The optical flares settings are automatically adjusted depending on the size of the
light array. However if you want to manually fine-tune the exact values for brightness and scale used by
optical flares, you will need to turn the expressions off first. To disable the automatic expressions just
select the optical flares layer (its orange) and press e e to reveal the two expressions. Click on the =
sign to turn the expressions off, so you can change the settings manually.

Speed & compatibility: As mentioned above, a big factor in render times is the optical flares plugin.
By default, the use GPU option is turned off to increase stability but if you have a powerful machine
(or a machine with a powerful GPU) then turning this switch on can help improve render times a lot.
(turning on the GPU option crashes After Effects on my MacBook Pro, which is why its off)

The Use GPU option is turned off by default, but enabling it might make renders faster. It might also
make your machine crash, so remember to save first!

3D SET PROJECT
The VideoHive purchase also includes a separate project which demonstrates how the lightwalls can be
used as part of a 3D set. This project is intended to be used for inspiration and to demonstrate how
animating lightwalls can be used as textures in other projects.
The 3D set project uses the Trapcode Lux project to create visible spotlights. While the project will
work without Lux, it wont look as effective.
Please note that you DO NOT need Trapcode Lux to work with the main lightwall kit project.

Support:
Please contact me by email for any support issues or bugs: chris@chriszwar.com

The music track used in the preview video and demonstration project is This is dubstep by fassounds:
http://audiojungle.net/user/fassounds