Ray of Light - Page 3

The Left Effect

Now that you have come to terms with visualising the angles that the light can take, we need to look at the light effect itself.

1. First we need some text, or an object to put in front of the light. I will use the flashkit text. The first step is to break the text into individual objects, use CTRL+B to do that. This turns the letters into fills.

2. Create 2 layers for each letter. In the case of this demo, lets look at the first letter 'F', create a layer 'F-Light' and 'F'. Copy the letters from the broken text above into their respective layers, so initially we will have a copy of the 'F' in the 'F-Light' and the 'F' layer.

3. In the 'F' layer, select the 'F' shape, and make it into a symbol (F8) we will use it later, and it needs to be a symbol in order for us to change its alpha values and shapes later on.

4. To Create the actual lights, go the the layer 'F-light' that has the broken apart version of the letter on it. Using the line tool (set to a different colour to the text) draw the light shape. The first letters (left-most) will have the longest lights and as you get closer to the center of where you want your light to be, the distance the light rays will decrease. This is a matter of perspective. If you are creating the lights that light to the right, make the rays a little longer (you'll see why when you do it!)