Lightning Plugin After Effects

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Clara Zellinger

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Aug 3, 2024, 12:42:50 PM8/3/24

to travesejwin

Hi Gang,

First time posting, and have very amateur-level skills, so hoping it's not an obvious one! I've been using the Advanced Lightning effect and getting some great results but have stumped myself on how to get it to follow a path.

For example, I want the lightning to run along some wires, and the only thing I can imagine is creating a mask above and below the wires, and editing the alpha obstacle so it squeezes through the crevice. It feels like I must be missing a much easier solution, and would love to know if anyone had a better idea!

Cheers,
Brad

Nope, you're not missing anything. there is no built-in functionality for that. Depending on the situation it may make sense to create a straight lightning bolt and bend it into place e.g. with Bezier Warp or other distortion effects.

For whatever reason the plugin does not appear to be functional at letting iCUE control the ASUS products (GPU/MOBO), however once the plugin is installed and so is armory crate, iCUE detects that I have an ASUS GPU/MOBO, and even gives me the option to change lighting settings, however these changes do no manifest to the hardware, Armory Crate's settings for RGB will overwrite iCUE.

BUT, this same problem occurred after (what I assume) was a Windows 11 Update a few days ago. I then updated Armoury Crate, problem stayed. Updated GPU drivers, problem stayed. Sucked it up and installed iCue 5.8 (w/ clean uninstall), problem stayed, even running as Administrator. Clean uninstall and reinstalled 4.33 and the problem was gone! But, only for like 1 day. Then I found your post! So, this fix will likely make iCue 5.8 work whenever I decide to finally update.

Also to note to the OP, when I did a clean uninstall of iCue the first time, I removed the external iCue Asus Plugin. I was told somewhere that this is baked into iCue now as of early into iCue 4. I had just never uninstalled it....everything seems stable for now (Vengeance RGB and ASUS GPU via ASUS B-550A mobo), but if problems come back, that plugin will be where I start!

EDIT: Found a post from 2021 with a Corsair Employee talking about Aura Sync AND Asus Plugin no longer being needed or supported - Asus Plugin issues - Comment 997154

Oh man, this makes so much sense why I ran into problems when I had installed Armoury Crate first, then iCUE, and had it working perfectly. Then I accidentally clicked the Asus plugin install button, no way to interrupt it nor does it ask for confirmation of course... and iCUE's control of Aura was immediately broken after that. Forever. Uninstalled Armoury Crate and iCUE and now I cannot get the case's front panel lights to work, but all the native iCUE devices work great. FFS

To apply the Advanced Lightning to the newly created solid, make sure the solid layer is selected and then double click on the Advanced Lightning effect. Alternatively, you can also drag and drop the effect onto the layer. You should now see a lightning strike down the middle of your composition.

Note that the lightning effect does not animate by default when you scrub through your footage.
It will change when you move the Origin and Direction markers around, but we would like our lightning to constantly twist and jerk around like a real life sustained lightning would.

We will be adding multiple lightning strikes to our solid layer, so I want each individual lightning to be a little less detailed.
Open up the Expert Settings tab in the Advanced Lightning effect. Lower the Complexity to 4. The lightning should now be single stroke with an occasional branch or two.
Increase the Turbulence to around 1.5 and the Forking to around 70% to add just a few more branches back into the lightning effect.

Now go to the time position where you want your lightning effect to start, grab the left side of the solid layer and trim it down so the lightning activates at the moment when Jimmy unleashes his wrath onto me.

You may notice that we can only see a single lightning effect. Where did the other one go? It gets overwritten by the second Advanced Lightning and the way to get it back is to tick the Composite on Original check box of the copied effect. This will apply the first lightning and then composite the second one on top of the first.

For this, we will use simple subtractive masks. Note that if you select the solid layer and try to apply a mask, nothing will happen because the lightning effect is generated after the masks are applied.

To get around this issue we need to pre-compose the solid layer so that all the lightning effects are applied before we add any masks. Right click on the layer and select Pre-compose from the context menu.

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