The Lens Flare plug-ins, which are part of the PixelFX plug-ins set, simulate the effect of streaks and spots of light, caused in real cameras when light enters and bounces inside a camera lens. This plug-in set contains geometries that simulate different shapes, which can be used for lens flare or simple flare effects. Each plug-in can take on very different appearance depending on how the parameters are adjusted. The best advice for working with these plug-ins is to simply play around with the parameter configurations.

The Flare draws itself as a combination of a geometry shader and a pixel shader. When a Flare Container is created a non-editable pixel shader is added to the created Flare container.

In addition, the Expert Container plug-in is automatically added and configured in such a way as to cause the shape used to always be seen in front of all other objects, blending with the rest of the scene to resemble the effect of light bouncing off the lens.

The baseline plug-in within this set is the pxLensMulti plug-in, which is a container plug-in, whose purpose is to manage other geometry plug-ins. The one exception in this set is the pxLensEnergyBolt, which does not simulate lens flare, but rather the effect of electricity or lightning and it is not managed by pxLensMulti.

The following Geometry plug-ins are located in the PixelFX folder:

• pxLensEnergyBolt

• pxLensGlowBall

• pxLensGlowSpikes

• pxLensPolyElement

• pxLensRandomPoly

• pxLensRays

• pxLensSpark

• pxLensStripes

See Also

• PixelFXLensFlare