Imitation effects

Some simulation effects use a number of common controls. The “Card Displacement” effect also uses many of the controls that are also used by the “Card Dance” effect.

The “Lighting” controls
Lighting Type
Sets the type of lighting used. The Remote Source control simulates sunlight and casts shadows in one direction, with rays of light falling on the object at almost any angle. The “Point Source” control is similar to a light bulb and casts shadows in all directions. The “First Composite Light” control uses the first layer of light in the composition, which can use a variety of settings.

Light Intensity.
Sets the power of the light. The higher this value, the brighter the layer will be. Other lighting settings also affect the overall lighting intensity.

Light Color
Sets the light color.

Light position
Specifies the position of light in the X, Y axis space. To interactively select a position, press ALT (Windows) or OPTION (Mac OS) and drag the effect point to light.

Light Depth.
Determines the position of lighting in Z-axis space. If you select negative values, the lighting moves behind the layer.

Ambient lighting.
Distributes the lighting over the layer. If you increase this value, lighting is added evenly to all objects, which prevents the shadow from being completely filled with black. If you set Ambient Light to Pure White and all other controls to 0, the object is fully illuminated and all 3D shadows are removed from the scene.

The “Material” controls
The “Material” controls set the reflection values.

Diffuse reflection.
Sets the shapes of the shadows of objects. The construction of the shadow depends on the angle at which the light falls on the surface and does not depend on the viewer’s position.

Mirror reflection
Makes allowance for the viewer’s position. Simulates the reflection of the light source back to the viewer. Can create the illusion of mirror shine. You can apply this control for realistic effects, gradually increasing the values to mask the transition from filtered to unfiltered versions of the layer.

Highlight Sharpness.
Controls the mirror shine. Surfaces with specular gloss create fine and dense reflections, while more matte and dull surfaces spread light over a wider area. Mirrored lighting represents the color of the incoming light. Because lighting is usually white or not quite white, extensive backlighting can reduce the saturation of an image by adding white to the color of the surface.

The “Dance of the Cards” effect.
This effect creates the appearance of choreography for cards by separating layers into multiple cards and controlling all the geometric aspects of the cards with a second layer. For example, the “Dance of Cards” effect can mimic protruding sculptural elements, a crowd making a “wave,” or letters floating on the surface of a pond.

This effect works with a color of 8 bits per channel.

Camera position controls: Original, with rotation adjusted using the “Camera Position” controls and the “Angle Bracketing” controls
Original (top left), with rotation adjusted using the Camera Position controls (bottom left) and Angle Snap controls (bottom right)
Original, gradient layer, and with Card Dance effect applied
Original (left), gradient layer (center) and with Card Dance (right)
Apply the Card Dance effect to the layer to use for the face of the cards. To set the representation, you can use rotation or perspective controls, or combine the perspective of the effect in any of the scenes, using linking tracking points.

For example, you can select a vertical grayscale gradient layer (black on top, white on bottom) in the “Gradient Layer 1” menu, then choose “Intensity 1” and the “X-axis rotation source” menu. The “Dance of Cards” effect uses the intensity value of the gradient to animate the rotation of the cards along the X-axis. It assigns a numerical value to the center pixel of each of the cards on the gradient layer, given the intensity of that pixel. Pure white has a value of 1, pure black has a value of -1, and 50% gray has a value of 0. The Dance of Cards effect then multiplies this value by the X Rotation Multiplier value and rotates each card by the resulting value. If the “X Rotation Multiplier” value is 90, the cards in the top row are rotated almost 90° backward, the cards in the bottom row are rotated almost 90° forward, and the cards in the middle rows are rotated a smaller amount. Cards in the 50% gray area do not rotate.