Optical Flares A Game Changer for Knoll Light Factory?

Looking at the few sneak peaks we have seen of Video Copilot’s new lens flare plugin, Optical Flares, it is already looking like it could be massive competition for the leading Lens Flare generator, Knoll Light Factory. Yeah, KLF has been around for ages, but time is showing, and although it is very popular among its users, its got a steep price and an ancient looking interface.

If you already have Knoll Light Factory, and use it often, well you are probably going to want to stick with it because, well… you shelled out almost $400 for it, and you might as well get your money worth.  For newcomers to the lens flare market, they might be looking to grab a copy of Optical Flares, for one… its less than half the price of KLF.  Not only that, but the aesthetics of interface, control and learning curve are always a big factor as well.  From what I have seen of Optical Flares, the built-in 3D capabilities and the beautiful interface are enough to sell me on the product.  A lot of what KLF has can be rigged to work just like Optical Flares, but it takes a lot of expressions, time, and workarounds.  Andrew showed us how you can use their Track Lights option to track the lens flares to 3d lights in your composition, which is one of those things with KLF that you would need to rig a workaround.  But that, among I am sure many other things such as using AE’s lights for things like scale, brightness, intensity, and position, are going to make it a nice contender for KLF to compete with.

Now for the biggest, at least, visual difference between the two plugins, is the interface.  There is no denying that the Optical Flares plugin Options window looks absolutely amazing.  The way you can preview, customize and pick your lens flares in its own window, it almost seems as though it is a standalone application.  Previewing and customizing lens flares couldn’t be any easier too, with real time previews, your composition available for view in the preview window, full screen previews, a huge library of pre-made lens flares… it seems like the possibilities really could be endless, and we haven’t even seen everything that the plugin has to offer yet.  Also something that KLF doesn’t have is the dynamic lens flare triggering rules (seen above) that they have built in to make your lens flares act like actual lens flares when the flares move outside of the lens, such as sparkling, or the rays growing and then disappearing.  This is just one of the few details that they have put in to make this one hell of a plugin to have in the ol’ toolbox.

Now, remember these are only details we have gathered from the few sneak peaks we have seen over on the Video Copilot Blog, but I am sure we are going to see a lot more in the coming month or so as they get closer to their “sometime November-ish” release date.  You can see the two blog entries so far:  New Product Preview: Optical Flares and BLOG SHOW: Optical Flares & Bears Oh My! Also, you can check out Knoll Light Factory over at Red Giant Software to compare and contrast, or even download the trial to see how it works for yourself.