How would I do a "light shining through text" effect without Shine?

I'm trying to do the light shining through text effects that's seen everywhere in commercials and tv nowadays. I have After Effects 6.5 but I don't have Shine. I also have 3d Max 7 although I would really rather not do it in there unless I absolutely have to. I've tried on Google but every tutorials out there uses Shine. I think I remember someone on here explaining how to do it a while ago, but I can't find the thread. I would think that there would be a way with the 3D abilities of After Effects but I just can't figure out how to do it, I've been fooling around with it all day. Thanks in advance and I'm sure this will benefit other people on this board as well.

 

Play with Radial Blurs.

 

Duplicate your text layer. On the top layer, apply the "Radial blur" effect. Set it to zoom, and then set the blur pretty high. Animate the x parameter of the blur direction. Set the layer's blending mode to screen or add. The end. It'll take freakin' forever to render though. Should look a bit like this: [image=http://fotofects.com/v2/images/stories/photoshop/effects/zoom_blurred_text/4.jpg]

 

Yep.

But seriously, go get Shine.

 

You can do it with 3ds Max


Basically, make a camera--make a white plane facing the camera (covering the view) then make a spotlight behind the camera in the same direction--pointing at the plane. Then you use an image of the words you want to use(where the words are white and everything else in the image is black) and then set that image as the projection map. Add Volumetrics (where beams of light are visible as if in smoke) and then set the Near Attenuation(the light fades as it gets closer to the light/camera) Then just render it out.

 

You only say that because you do everything in Shine. Everything.

 

Do it the old fasioned way with radial blur like suggested before. Back in the day we had to draw every pixel of our volumetric lighting effects, both ways!

 

Radial blur works, but it's just slow.

 

Radial blur gives ok results. It's good for what I need it for, but isn't exactly what I was looking for. I was aiming for something along the lines of the text in the intro for "Firefly". It's a very fierce, almost fiery flow. The best I can get with the radial blur is a slight, barely noticeable effect. For those that haven't seen the show, here's a pic of what I mean:

[image=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/21/Firefly_opening_screen.jpg]

It's a poor quality pic I know, but it gets the point across. The radial blur method isn't nearly as vibrant as that one, and for some reason trying to increase the brightness or contrast has no effect on the text.

 

Thats 100% Shine right there, any other method will take far longer and produce only mediocre results.

If you can afford 3ds Max 7, just spend the $100 and get Shine.

gallion311

 

That's even a Shine default setting right there.

But if you duplicate and add your radial blurred layers, you can get some more vibrancy out of it at the cost of a huge render time hit.

 

After Effects 6.5 comes bundled with Cycore FX. Between 'em, the Cycore effects can do just about everything useful that Trapcode Shine can do (and often a fair bit faster, too), plus a few things that it can't do. Try the CC Radial Fast Blur with Zoom set to Brightest.

 

I read this and decided to try my own, made in after effects

Here's my go, its got 2 add layers with colour balance changing from red to blue to red, and of course the light source moving. It's also the title (the name, not the actual clip) for my new fanfilm, due for completion this weekend

Anyway here be linky: http://files.filefront.com/showdown_heavymov/;4705738;;/fileinfo.html

Comments appreciated

edit: and yes it took a while to render the 4 seconds of fx, about 2 minutes

 

It's black & white. Shine will render that at least twice as fast and it doesn't look grainy. Also it won't produce the ghosting/halo artifacts you're getting. I agree with the person that said it: If you can afford 3DStudio, shine's a drop in the bucket.

 

Shine generally renders in real time, too, and has many more uses than just the light-through-text thing.

Man, I love that plugin.

 

Ok here's a better one I did, I used hue/saturation for the colouring, its more 'solid'. It's also a semi-trailer for our new fanfilm

http://files.filefront.com/showdown_realmov/;4705978;;/fileinfo.html

Comments appreciated

edit: 5th february is the planned release date, we are 90% sure we can make it, but no promises, so this clip may end up being wrong in the end

 

Shine is great. I make no bones about it, it's a fantastic plugin and it's use is most certainly not limited to doing the same old text effect you see on Idol ads.

Here's another one - before I could save up to get my copy of Shine, I used to key the ugly red watermark out of my shot, make it a little smaller so the gap wouldn't be noticable and BAM - it was like there was never a watermark. TOUCHDOWN.

Boy I'm glad I don't have to do that anymore.

 

If you have AE 6.5 then you have CC Radial Fast Blur which gives perty good results and is really fast.

 

Yep CC radial blur is used in AfterEffects 7.0 for one of the presets, and it looks great.

 

How would I use it in a.e. 6.5? I haven't seen any 'CC radial fast blur' at all....?

 

Must have full version

aka not trial, not pirated.

 

I have AE6.5 Pro. Came with Keylight, and Color Finesse, and all that jazz. But no CC Fast Radial Blur. I've just got plain ole Blur->Radial Blur. By the way: For future reference, the effect we're talking about is called Volumetric Lighting Effects. I has to do with modeling/Simulating light that strikes small particles (such as dust or fog) causing them to "glow".

"Radial blur" is a pretty piss poor way of doing this.

**Waits for -spiff- to come correct this post.**