Adobe After Effects CS3 Professional Studio Techniques

Chapter 12. Light

Image courtesy of 4charros

There are two kinds of light: the glow that illuminates and the glare that obscures.

–James Thurber

Light is the most complex phenomenon for a compositor to understand. By “understand” I mean not only scientifically but intuitively, like a painter or cinematographer.

The world of the compositor is less pure and scientific than other areas of digital production, which rely on elaborate models to simulate the way light works in the physical world. Like a painter, you observe the play of light in the three-dimensional world to re-create it two-dimensionally. Like a cinematographer, you succeed with a feeling ...