BCC Rays Cartoon in Adobe After Effects

In this tutorial, we are going to use BCC Rays Cartoon in Adobe After Effects to generate a volumetric lighting effect on an animated text element. The BCC Rays Carton filter will also give the text the appearance of being made of neon lights. We'll complete the effect by using the BCC Light Sweep to add a light sweep across the face of the text element and then we'll use the BCC Colorize Glow filter to provide a soft glowing look. Click on any of the images to see a full resolution version.

Go here for an Apple Final Cut Pro version of this tutorial.

Launch AE and create a D1 sized NTSC comp with a 5 second duration.

Now we'll generate the text element:

Create a text layer
Type out the letters BCC in upper case
Set the font face to Denmark
Set the font size to 218 points
Set the text color to white
Set the paragraph to center justified

Because we want the text to animate around the center of the text, we'll need to move the anchor point from the bottom of the text to the center:

Twirl down the text layer in the timeline
Twirl down the Transform group
Set the anchor point to 0.0, -75

Now we'll animate the text:

Make sure the CTI is at the start of the timeline
Click on the stopwatch to enable the creation of keyframes for the scale parameter
Set the scale parameter to 0
Move to frame 6
Set the scale parameter value to 110
Move to frame 8
Set the scale parameter value to 90
Move to the end of the timeline
Set the scale parameter value to 400
Move back 4 frames
Set the scale parameter value to 90
Preview to RAM

The text now zooms in from the distance, with a slight bounce, remains static until it nears the end of the timeline and then zooms forward past the camera. So now that we have the text set and animated, let's add some eye candy.

Move to the middle of the timeline
Apply the Rays Cartoon filter to the text
Set the cartoon from pop-up to alpha
Set the line thickness parameter to a value of 25
Set the intensity parameter to a value of 100
Set the ray length parameter to a value of 75
Set the ray style pop-up to fat

By default, the look is a fiery red - orange gradient but we're going to change it to a blue gradient:

Click on the Color Preset pop-up and select the Blues gradient preset

Now we'll animate the rays so that they move across the text horizontally:

Move to the start of the timeline
Click on the stopwatch beside the light source parameter in the effect controls window
Set the position xy value to 261, 252
Move to the end of the timeline
Set the position xy value to 428, 252
Preview to RAM

Next we'll add the BCC Light Sweep:

Move to the center of the timeline
Add the BCC Light Sweep filter to the text
Set the light center parameter to a value of 339, 205
Set the intensity parameter to a value of 165
Set the ambient follow parameter to a value of 100
Move to the beginning of the timeline
Click on the stopwatch for the light center parameter
Move to the end of the timeline
Set the light center parameter to a value of 339, 300
Preview to RAM

Now, to complete the effect we'll add the BCC Colorize Glow:

Add the BCC Colorize Glow filter to the text
Set the blur amount parameter to a value of 4
Set the spread parameter to a value of 100
Set the intensity parameter to a value of 150
Click on the gradient preset pop-up and select the preset Blues from the list that appears
Preview to RAM

So now we have created an animated title effect using only a raw text element and a few filters from the 180 + arsenal of filters in the BCC 5 package. The BCC filters can be downloaded from the BorisFX web site at www.borisfx.com/downloads/. The trial version will render without watermark for a period of 14 days, after which they will render with a watermark across the image. Trial versions of the product can be unlocked by purchasing a key from Boris FX.

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