It’s been 13 years since conjuring up the concept for Knoll 3D Flare which also paved the way for Knoll Light Factory 3’s feature set. Knoll 3D Flare (K3DF) from Red Giant Software was the 3D flare precursor to Video Copilot’s Optical Flares lens flare plugin for Adobe After Effects.
K3DF was conceived in a hotel room one night while I was up in Boston training the talented artists at NESN, The New England Sports Network, during the summer of 2009. I was preparing for the second day of training and while building some materials I thought why not stand on the shoulders of giants and attempt to create a 3D lens flare rig using expressions and Knoll Light Factory as the base. I used some of Dan Ebberts code from his Motion Script site, a little math, and within an hour or so I had a rig in 3D space. I showed it to the NESN designers and producers the following morning, and all they could say was “Wow, how did you do that? Lens flares aren’t in 3D space, they’re a 2d effect.”
So with that awe-inspiring reaction in mind I sent the AE project file to Aharon Rabinowitz at Red Giant Software. His response was “most excellent” by taking charge of the project while hooking us up with the JavaScript master himself, Dan Ebberts to code and design what would become Knoll 3D Flare nearly six months before Optical Flares was released. And Knoll 3D Flare also incorporated true 3D and 3D RGB Obscuration without having to tell the flare manually which layers were foreground layers when working in a comp with 3D layers. Watch the overview by Aharon Rabinowitz on the Reels & Videos page, but that’s not the entire story.
(Image top right: Knoll 3D Flare in AE. Image below: Knoll Light Factory preset pack designed by David Vinson for Red Giant Software, 2009.)
The final ILM composite of Robin Williams as Peter Pan as he soars over Neverland in Hook, 1991. Above image copyright TriStar Pictures.
“Jack, Maggie, all you have to do is think one happy thought, and you’ll fly like me,” said Peter. Maggie exclaimed “Mommy!” Jack, dumbfounded with delightful glee, says giddily “My Dad, Peter Pan.”
Finding Neverland
This story actually begins with the origin story of Knoll Light Factory. ILM Visual Effects Supervisor John Knoll knew they needed a solution to create Tinkerbell for Hook and while observing practical flares through the camera lens he thought he could recreate these artifacts within the computer. John was able to reproduce all of the primitives giving them full control during compositing and post production allowing them to achieve a photo-real look. Some time after Hook was released Knoll began to sell his plugins to the public through a humble, little VFX-driven company called Puffin Designs.
Puffin designed and developed software for video and film production terminology and techniques, visual effects, rotoscoping, and offered VHS video courses teaching the fundamentals of the art and science behind visual effects and the post production process.
Ron Brinkmann, creator of Shake, and Matt Silverman, rotoscoping guru, were a few of the veterans Puffin contracted to create these videos. Matt has posted some of them here. I personally learned a wealth of information from watching these videos as I transitioned from a graphic designer to a digital compositor.
Knoll’s lens flare technology was ported to Photoshop, After Effects, ElectricImage, and Flame. Lens flares became mainstream in compositing and motion graphics, and other companies like The Foundry and GenArts started offering their take on lens flare plugins. However, even with the new competition, Knoll dominated the scene for over 15 years. In the mid to late 90s I had the chance to see first hand a key element from the film that inspired the creation of this digital lens flare tool. Real Lens Flares has now officially replaced the Knoll legacy.
Poster illustration by legendary Drew Struzan
The Kerner Company
During the mid to late 90s my friend and I decided we wanted to see if we could find the elusive ILM. We were out in San Francisco for a design conference and ended up putting over 700 miles on the rental before week’s end touring Cali. Before ILM we had a quick detour in Carmel. We stopped by Clint Eastwood’s Mission Ranch for a bite. When I was walking around the grounds I saw an old truck with Kincaid Photography printed on it. My buddy told me Clint used his own truck when they filmed The Bridges of Madison County. Not a bad meal, but after three nights there still no Clint, just his golfing buddies. So on to Marin County we ventured.
We were well on our way to our destination but we were missing one vital piece of info: ILM’s address. Luckily these were the days of pay phones along the highway so we stopped, and my friend sweet-talked the operator to give us the address since it wasn’t listed in the phone book. Something about us having a meeting with one of their engineers. He got the guy’s name out of a Post magazine ad for Blade servers. Before I knew it we were parked in front of the Kerner Company, Optical Reseach Lab, not ILM. It was a front. Had to be. So off we went though the front door, into the lobby, and what did we see? The original matte painting on glass from Hook (see below) and a Stormtrooper down the hallway. We hung out for a bit and then we chatted with some engineers at lunch about hardware, etc. at the sandwich shop next door. We never got a tour, but seeing that matte painting was enough for me.
Image above: Yusei Uesugi working on the Neverland matte painting on glass for Hook, released in 1991. Image copyright Industrial Light & Magic.
Image above left: Knoll 3D Flare commercial concept “Jacks” by David Vinson, lead compositor and environment, and Jim Powell, camera design and Jack placements. Image above right: Orange Chroma Flare preset for Red Giant Software’s Knoll Light Factory designed by David Vinson.
