Knoll Light Factory Pro 2.5.2

The famous lens flare tool from
Academy Award winner John Knoll

Created by John Knoll, Photoshop co-creator and Star Wars effects guru, Knoll Light Factory is one of the industry's most popular motion graphics tools. It is most famous for its high-fidelity simulations of light effects called flares, which simulate reflections from a very bright light source as seen through a camera's lens. Knoll Light Factory is Hollywood's go-to tool for adding interest to text or logos or extra pop to FX explosions.

Highlights

Custom Lens Editor
Build your own flares or edit a preset with the custom lens editor. Choose from elements such as StarFilter, Ellipse, or PhotonSpikeBall, and control each element's position, color, scale, thickness, angle, and width. You also get pinpoint control over brightness, scale and color of the lens as a whole.

70 powerful presets
Use the same presets that the pros turn to every day for sports events and major motion pictures. Presets include Desert Sun, Arc Welder, Generic Panavision, Spikey Glow, Pv1 (for exploding stars), RedLaser, RockConcert, Omnimax (a flare seen on IMAX projection), or Distant Quantum (the original photon torpedo).
Auto-obscuration tools
Flares can be obscured by objects (cars, enemy spacecraft) that come between them and the viewer. The auto-track feature tracks specific points in an existing alpha channel, making flare location a snap. The integrated Knoll Unmult tool generates alphas, making it easier to include lights and flares in complex composites.
Features

Customizable Presets
Choose from 70 presets or customize them to suit your needs.

Lens Editor
Use the custom lens editor to create and save your own unique effects for future use.

Custom Light Effects
19 lens elements in the main plug-in create custom light effects. Each element is also included as a separate plug-in for creating complex motion graphics.

Automatic Tracking
The auto track feature tracks multiple points and adds multiple identical lighting points to a scene.

GPU Support
Offers up to 10x render speed improvements, compared to a single CPU

Auto Obscuration
Automatically hides or reveals a light effect as the light source moves behind another object, automatically adjusting the light's brightness as it is obscured.

Light Factory EZ Plug-in
Included with the package, Light Factory EZ gives you access to all 70 flares with a single click.

Alpha Generation
Generate integrated alpha channels automatically with Knoll Unmult.
Compatibility


System Requirements

Our tests have shown that the our products perform best when used with the system configurations listed below. Although many of our products will run on older or less-powerful systems, those listed below are the minimum system requirements which we support.

Apple Macintosh

Mac OS X 10.4.11 and later
10.5.2 and later
Power Mac G5, Mac Intel
1 GB of RAM
30 MB of Hard Drive space

PC / Windows

Windows XP SP1 or later (32-bit)**

Windows Vista (32-bit)**
Pentium 4 2.4 GHz or faster (or AMD equivalent)
1 GB of RAM
30 MB of Hard Drive space

**Windows XP and Vista 64-bit systems are not supported at this time.
Host Applications

Knoll Light Factory Pro runs in a variety of host applications. Each purchase and serial number allows the owner to use the product on more than one host application, but only on a single computer at any one time. Except where noted, the features are the same in all systems and host applications.

Adobe After Effects CS3, 7, 6.5
Adobe Premiere Pro CS3, 2.0
Apple Final Cut Pro 6, 5.1.4

Apple Motion 3.02

Avid Xpress Pro/Media Composer 5.6+,2.6+

Please ensure that the host version is compatible with your operating system. Check with application provider for specifics.
Video Cards

Knoll Light Factory Pro can use the graphics card to accelerate rendering.

Knoll Light Factory Pro supports a wide range of cards from both ATI or NVIDIA. For ATI cards, we require a 9600 XT or greater, or an X series card starting with the X700 series. Cards with greater model numbers and at least 128 MB of RAM can be used to render Knoll Light Factory Pro effects.

For NVIDIA cards, we support the 6600 model and higher or QuadroFX 1300 and up. Cards with higher model numbers and a minimum of 128 MB of RAM can run Knoll Light Factory Pro. For users working with HD images, we require that the video card have at least 256 MB of RAM. In all cases, we suggest using the latest video drivers for your graphics card.

We do NOT support Intel GMA processor found on many lower priced laptop computers.

Performance Expectations

Since the processing requirements vary wildly by the number of tools in a look, it is difficult to give exact output or render speed expectations on every system with every lens flare. On the highest-end systems such as a Mac Pro or PC workstation with the Quadro 5000 series of graphic cards, you can expect very speedy rendering.

For comparison, in After Effects CS3 running on Mac Pro 2008 3.2 GHz machine, Knoll Light Factory can render the preset "Red Super Fan" at between 7-8 frames per second using a single CPU. This Mac Pro ships with the ATI 2600 XT. Using the ATI GPU to render the same preset results in a speed of 18-19 fps. The speed is approximately 2.8x faster.

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