Red Giant announced the release of Knoll Light Factory 3, a major update to the company’s 3D lens flare system. Co-developed with Academy award-winning VFX supervisor John Knoll, the new Light Factory delivers an intuitive interface, realistic flare elements, numerous presets and time-saving animated behaviors.
“This is the biggest advance to Light Factory in many years,” said Knoll, inventor of the lens flare technology. “Version 3 delivers a great new editor to make flare creation faster, and new and updated elements for the flare engine for better accuracy at high resolution. The library includes a collection of realistic cinematic and distant flares that I’ve built to help with your next production.”
To showcase the impact of Knoll Light Factory 3, Red Giant has produced the short film Order Up in collaboration with Seth Worley, the Webby award-winning director of Red Giant’s film Plot Device.
“Building a short film around a product is easy when the product is as exciting as Light Factory 3,” said Worley. “Much like Plot Device, where we used over-the-top effects and humor to show off Magic Bullet Looks 2, we made Order Up with some fairly extravagant but realistic light effects to show how awesome Knoll Light Factory continues to be.”
Central to the new version is a completely redesigned intuitive interface that simplifies designing flares with reorganized controls. The Lens Designer preview has been rebuilt to enhance productivity.
Knoll Light Factory 3 includes new flare elements, offering 28 Elements and 56 Sprites that let users quickly create a light design. The product ships with over 100 Lens Flare Presets — including new presets designed by Knoll — that emulate real world lenses and lights, and are equally useful for visual effects, sci-fi scenes and motion graphics.
New automated Behaviors can be used to add unique animation by simulating real world light effects like Strobe, Pulse, Flicker and Blink. The new Edge Reaction feature flares or fades light at the edge of a frame for more realistic effects and cinematic impact. Integration with Adobe After Effects 3D camera and comp lights lets users move the Knoll flares in 3D space and sync them with animated lights.
The system supports After Effects CS4-CS6, Premiere Pro CS5-CS6 and Apple Final Cut Pro 7. Knoll Light Factory 3 is available immediately for $199.00 for new customers, or $99.00 to upgrade. It is also part of the company’s newly released Effects Suite 11 – a popular suite of over 70 tools for visual effects and broadcast design.
