LightRays

LightRays uses an image to imitate volumetric light. The image path described here does not supply a 3D scene, depth or separate occluder geometry. Plausibility depends on agreement between isolated emitters, beam direction and the shot.

Source Regions shows what generates the effect, Rays Alone reveals the pattern without the source, and Final Result evaluates compositing. Begin with emitters: a low threshold on noisy footage can generate unwanted streaks that reducing Soften will not fix.

Input Alpha separates three tasks: mask the emitters, supply compositing alpha, or become the ray source. Opaque footage has alpha=1 throughout, so Is The Source Of The Glow differs from isolating a lamp in RGB. For Text+, alpha can provide clean glyph shapes independently of text color.

From A Location uses Position X/Y as the directional origin; At An Angle sets an overall orientation. Position does not choose the image source: emitting regions still come from Source Regions. Moving the point changes the ray perspective from regions already isolated.

Ray Dropoff controls falloff and shape. Default, soft gives gentle fading, while Keep Shape Of Source retains the emitting outline. CCD Bloom Harsh and Soft raise emitter brightness more strongly or gently as Length increases. This is more than a ray-tip sharpness control.

Shimmer and Atmosphere add varying structure through Strength, Detail, Scale, H vs V Ratio, Evolution and Seethe. BMD describes lower Detail as finer and higher Detail as larger pattern detail. Evolution changes the pattern state; Seethe automatically advances it with each frame from the start.

In the supplied Inspector, Colorize is a color field with RGB, not a separate tint-strength slider. Brightness, Gamma and Saturation control other aspects of the rays. Matching Relative Length R/G/B avoids added length separation but does not make a colored source white.

Composite Type blends with the source. Source Recovery corresponds to the manual Bright Region Recovery and helps reclaim details obscured by the added effect. It cannot restore information already clipped in the source. Use a separate Normal Merge for local control of the completed Final Result.