You should get a long narrow tube that extends into the Z-plane. Select the polygons in the ends of this tube and delete them.

Next, in an empty layer create a 2D box with the following dimensions:

You should have a 2D box that extends in the same direction as your tube. Copy the box to another layer. Select the two points that are located at 0m on the Z-axis. Move these two points along Z - axis until they are resting at 7.5m. Using the control key while dragging in the "top" view will constrain the movement of the box object along the Z axis exclusively. You can also move them via the numeric panel for the move tool, just strike "n" and enter 7.5 meters in Z-axis.

Return to the layer that has the tube in it. Select the points that make up the far end of the tube, the one that extrudes away from us in the Z-axis. Using the stretch tool in the Modify panel, stretch the points into one another creating a small point at that end of the tube. Your tube should look a little like a cone. Name the surface of the tube "streak" and save the object as Streak.lwo.

Select the next layer, which should contain our full length box. Name the surface "cover" and save the object as Cover.lwo. Select the layer with our modified box in it and select all of the points. Strike "x" and "v" on your keyboard. What you just did was select the points, cut them out and pasted them back in. This is the most effective way to get rid of our polygons. We are going to use this object as a morph object in layout and morph objects do not need their polygons to function. I realize that this means nothing when you’re talking about one polygon, but when you’re morph and target objects are comprised of tens of thousands of polygons, you will be glad you knew that little tip. Save this object as CoverMRPH.lwo.

Okay..... that’s it for Modeler, now lets load up Layout and have some fun!

First let’s set up our scene. We want a little more than a half second streak so let’s set the # of frames to 20. We want a black backdrop, which is the default so we are good there. Adjust your image size to meet your particular requirements for playback (I use a DPS Perception card so for me it is 720x480). Set your zoom value to 1 on the camera panel and antialiasing to low.

There are basically three things we want to do to create the illusion of a shooting star. One is to apply a streaking surface along the direction of the star’s travel. The second is to simulate the star itself, and thirdly, we want to uncover the whole thing, to give it the illusion of traveling across our field of view. We will do all three of these things, in reverse order.

From the objects panel load your three objects. Make the current object "Cover.lwo" and set the morph target as CoverMRPH.lwo. enter the envelope controller next to the morph-target amount window. Using "drag" pull the zero key-frame node up to a value of 100%. Using "create" click on the graph at frame one and at frame twenty creating key-frames at those two locations. Drag key frame twenty down to a value of 0% (you can also enter the value numerically by typing over the value indicated in the window). Click on use envelope and close the envelope editor. What you just did was tell the computer to cause the current object to assume the shape of our morph object beginning at key-frame one, (100% morph value) and over the course of twenty frames return to it’s normal shape (0% morph value). See...morphin is EZ!

Click on continue. Make the active edit object Cover.lwo. Set its parent as Streak.lwo. Move the Cover.lwo along the X axis until it is just to the right of the Streak object (about a 400mm move). Make the Streak.lwo your current object. Move this object until the end closest to you extends off the left side of your screen. Rotate the object on it’s heading until the far end of the Streak object crosses the middle of the screen. Make whatever move adjustments necessary to place the closest end of the streak object off and to the left of your screen. Create a key-frame at frame # 1.

Okay that is it for step #3...now on to step #2....hey something is uh...backwards??? Oh well press on! Stars await!

To create our star we will use a point light. From the lights panel make the current light a point light. Activate lens flare and enter the lens flare edit envelope. Turn off central ring and red outer glow. Select use envelope and then enter the light intensity envelope on the main lights panel. Within the intensity envelope editor, create a key-frame at one with a value of 100%, and create another one at key-frame twenty. Give key-frame twenty a value of 1%. Select continue.

From the camera view place the light just off to the left of the screen and to the right of Cover.lwo. Using the top view will help you in placing the light to the right of the cover object. Create key-frame one for this light. From the top view move the light to a position at the other end of the cover object maintaining the same distance to the right of the object. Create key-frame 20.

There! That was not so hard. One more thing with the lights, from the lights panel clone this light twice. This will give the light much more presence and give you control over fine details. Using the different variables available to each light, you can alter each of these lights slightly from one another and get some pretty amazing results. Experiment a little and give a few test renders, this will render fast even on slow machines.

The cool thing about cloning this light after we were done with setting it’s key-frames is that cloning also copies the key-frame parameters of the original. So we are done with the star, done with the reveal...all that is left is step #1....Huh??????

First things first...(or is that last??? oh never mind), from the surface panel select the current surface as cover. Click on the surface color button and enter a RGB value of 0 for a solid black color. Set diffuse level to 0 leave edge transparency at normal. This will cause our cover polygon to be a totally opaque and undetectable cover for our streak object. So on to the streaks!

Select streak as the current surface. We want a basic streaky translucent surface to move its way down the path of our traveling star. We will achieve this by building a custom surface to do the job. From the surfaces panel select the surface color button and enter a RGB value of 60 for a nice charcoal gray. Click on the T next to the RGB indicator and select Fractal Noise as your surface type. Enter a texture size vale of X=.02, Y=.01, Z=2. Enter a texture velocity of X=0, Y=0, Z=.05. Give the texture color a RGB value of 220 for dull white color. Set contrast to .5 and select use texture.

Almost there, just a couple of things left to do. Set luminosity to 5% and diffuse to 90% . Select Transparent edges and activate double-siding and smoothing. Experiment a little here, adding layers of fractal noise in the color texture map envelope, the transparency texture map envelope and the bump map envelope can offer endless mutations on this basic surface. Remember to alter your texture sizes for a more realistic effect.

Well one more thing, just ‘cuz it bugs me, when the Streak object is first revealed it seems too wide (tall) for that point of the illusion. So a quick little adjustment using stretch along the Y axis should take care of things. Shrink Streak.lwo down to about 20% of it’s original Y value and set a key-frame at 1. This will allow the streak to grow while the light travels down it’s length.

This simple streak of light can be used in compositing digital video with special effects either in layout or an another digital effects package. I use them as alpha channel streaks over company logo reveals. Have fun with it and one more tip...if you rotate the camera on its Bearing value only, you can easily redirect the angle of the streak effect. Make a bunch of these and store them off to be used over that dull text reveal...that little thing that turns hum drum into....well, Magic.

As always keep walking in the light,

Peace,
Mark McCrickard