Subtitles of the Movie

Besides the controls found in the light object, image objects have their own parameters which help determine how they react to light. In the properties tab, every object has a lighting section, including parent groups. The shading pop-up defaults to inherited. This simply means the group's objects will inherit the settings of the parent so if I set the parent shading to off, then all the objects will ignore the lights I have in the scene. This is the same as using Motion's global ambient light. So everything is 100 percent of its original color values and luminosity. If I set the parent shading to on, then the objects react to the scene's lights. If the parent is the highest in its hierarchy and its shading is set to inherited, then that's the same as having the shading set to on. The two jumping girl graphics are the same except for their highlight parameters in their shading sections. The girl on the left has no shininess enabled and the girl on the right has shininess enabled, set to 100 percent. I'll play it. The girl on the right gets brighter at a certain point as if it's reflecting a hot spot over the surface. I'll stop and scrub for a bit. So we get this nice blink of brightness. The percent may be a bit confusing because the lower the value, the longer the surface reacts to the light. So if you want this blink of light effect, set the shininess higher. Let's open another project. Next let's take a look at shadows. Shadows are created by shadow casting lights. Shadows are off by default for light, so I'll check them on here. Only point and spot light types can cast shadows. In this scene I have a point light and just as the light rays emanate radiantly, so do the shadows. The direction of the shadows always points away from the light, as you can see as I mov the point light. If I change the light type to spot, then only the objects within the conical beam will cast a shadow while everything else is dark. Let me switch the light type back to point. So what's the difference between these shadows and a drop shadow? I'll enable a shadow for this girl on the left side of the screen. A drop shadow is merely an offset version of the image that stays within its two-dimensional plane as you can see when I orbit the camera, whereas these shadows are cast by a light source independent of the graphics. Also when I rotate an object, its drop shadow rotates with it; very unnatural. I'll undo that, off goes her drop shadow. Now notice that I have uniform softness checked on in this scene for this shadows. This creates an overall blurriness to every single shadow regardless of how far they are away from the object that's casting them. But if I turn it off, then the shadows appear crisper by the objects that are casting them and the further they get away from those objects, the blurrier they get. These realistic shadows are harder for Motion to render so I'll turn back on uniform softness. I'll select the point light and duplicate it and then move the two lights around a bit. You can see that every light can cast a shadow if it's enabled to do so. I can adjust one of the light's shadow opacity or its softness and if you're getting jaggies in your shadows, then increase the softness value. I'll turn off the second light and mov the first back a bit. As you've already noticed, the graphic objects themselves have shadow parameters. An object can cast, receive or show only its cast shadow. I'll move the sale sign closer and it's now casting its shadow on the jumping man and on the floor. I'll choose the jumping man object and in the Inspector I'll turn off Receive Shadows so the sale sign shadow disappears from him but his shadow remains. If I check on Shadows Only, then his image disappears but his shadow remains. Shadows only is both a stylistic and a compositing tool. You may have a design that you want shadows traveling across but leave the objects casting them still a mystery or you may have an effects show where you want to comp in a CGI alien but you want to create a pass of its shadow moving across the floor of some video you shot. If your shadows are looking good but they are taking too long to render on the fly while you're working, then you can turn off all shadows by going to the Status Bar and the Render Pop-Up and disable them there. Also in the Render Pop-Up is Reflections. Let's enable those. Reflections are a function of an object's reflection parameters. They do not depend on lights or any other object. In this scene we have a reflective floor and in the Inspector, just under the shadow parameters, are the reflection parameters. Increase the Reflectivity Parameter and you get more mirror-like appearance. You can blur the reflection and if you enable falloff, your reflections will fade away so now our floor looks more like it's made of deep ice. You can change the blend mode of the reflection for more pronounced effects. Let's pick the jumping girl. Whether or not an object will cast a reflection is actually found in the blending section of the properties tab. Why is it there? I don't know. It seems like this should be moved down to the reflections section. The pop-up disables or enables the object's ability to cast a reflection or make itself invisible and cast just a reflection. This would come in handy if you wanted the reflection but the object itself was getting in the way of the camera for instance. One more thing about reflections and that is the amount of recursiveness or how many times a reflection will bounce. In this scene I have our sales graphic and two reflective planes. And I'll orbit a bit. So I have set up a hall of mirrors basically. The reflection recursiveness is set in the project properties in the render settings. The maximum bounce is set at two and I'll click OK. And that's why we see only two reflections of the sale sign. Back to Project Properties and I can set the number of bounces to its maximum of four and we see two more reflections. So you are limited to a maximum of four bounces. So bear that in mind while you're designing.