Universe

Luster

Universe Luster gives text a smooth reflective appearance, with controls for bevel, highlights, gradients, and reflective maps. It also comes with several different presets to kickstart or inspire whatever look you're going for.

Getting Started        

• In Premiere, After Effects, Final Cut Pro X, Motion, Sony Vegas Pro, and Hit Film, drag the uni.Luster effect onto your clip.
• In Resolve, you'll need to follow a few extra steps:
  • Have your text on a video track above your footage's video track
  • Create a Compound Clip from your text, select it, and head into the Color view of Resolve's interface.
  • Within the Node window of Resolve, sever the default link between the text's node and the output.
  • Add a new Corrector node and Alpha output within the Node interface.
  • Create links from the Text's RGB and Alpha outputs to the newly created Corrector Node's RGB and alpha inputs
  • Then create links from the Corrector node's RGB and Alpha outputs to the final outputs for RGB and alpha, respectively.
  • With your Corrector node selected, key out the black background from your text, and click Invert to flip the key around.
  • Right-click in the Node interface and select Use OFX Alpha
  • Apply Luster to your Text node
    

Modify the Effect

• Browse Presets… brings up an animated gallery of presets, which are applied by either double-clicking the preset, or highlighting your preset and clicking Select.
• Source affects where the coloring comes from: Original being whatever the original color was of what the effect was applied to; Solid Color and Gradient Color are both picked from under the Source Color parameters below.
• Reflection Map (only in AE, Premiere, and FCP X) contains adjustable parameters controlling the appearance of the reflection on your source.
  • Reflection Source determines where the reflection on your text is coming from (must be another layer within your timeline)
  • Reflection Mix adjusts how much reflection is overlaid onto your source.
  • Reflection Blur controls how blurry or sharp your reflection is.
  • Center dictates the center position of the reflection.
  • Scale adjusts how large or small your reflective source is portrayed on the source.
  • Angle controls the angle of your reflection on a 360 axis.
  • Screen sets your reflection to blend over your source using the Screen setting, often resulting in a brighter appearance.
• Source Color contains controls for each of the colors within the effect
  
  • Source Color 1 determines which color is used at the start of Luster's gradient.
  • Source Color 2 allows you to select which color is between Source Color 1 and Source Color 2
  • Source Color 3 determines the color at the end of Luster's gradient.
  • Color Position 1 & 2 determine which positions Colors 1 and 2 are mapped to.
• Bevel contains various parameters controlling the appearance of the bevel effect, including:
  • Angle controls which angle the text is beveled in.
  • Size adjusts how large of a bevel is overlaid onto the source.
  • Soften affects the contrast between where the bevel ends and begins, giving it a softer or harder appearance.
  • Highlight determines the prominence of the bevel effect; its color is determined in the Bevel color swatch below
  • Shadow controls how dark the bevel is.
  • Bevel affects the color of the bevel’s Highlight parameter above using a color swatch as a reference.
  • Glassiness controls the intensity of your shadows and highlights, giving the effect a more ‘glassy’ or reflective appearance.
  • Refraction X, Y, and Z controls the angle at which light from the Bevel settings refracts off the bevel along the axis, relative to the source; negative numbers result in left, down, and back respectively, positive numbers result in right, up, and forward.
  • Glass Distortion adjusts how much of the shadows and highlights from your bevel are distorted by way of an invisible fractal field.
• Highlight contains controls affecting how the source is highlight from the Bevel:
  • Follow Gradient toggles whether the bevel’s highlights follow the gradient dictated above under Source.
  • Vertical Offset controls where the highlight’s gradient appears on the effect along the Y axis.
  • Intensity adjusts how much the highlight’s overlay affects the brightness of the source.
  • Rotation will rotate the highlight’s effect relative to the source.
  • Falloff adjusts the distance between the highlight’s range of colors.
  • Horizontal Distortion adjusts how distorted the reflection appears on the source along the X axis using an invisible fractal field.
  • Horizon Scale affects the grid of the distortive fractal; higher numbers meaning more distortions, lower meaning less; this will not affect anything unless Horizontal Distortion is above 0.
  • Edge Displace controls the distortion along the gradient’s edges.
  • Highlight Color contains three color swatches for you to dictate the colors of the highlight (only when Follow Gradient is disabled), with a Highlight Blend drop down list containing the standard overlay parameters, determining how the highlight is integrated over the other colors beneath it.
• Drop Shadow twirls down a list of controls affecting the drop shadow behind your source.
  • Distance determines how far away your shadow is from the source, based on its current angle.
  • Offset Angle controls the angle at which your shadow moves away from the source.
  • Softness adjusts the blur of the shadow.
  • Shadow Opacity affects the shadow’s transparency over the background.
  • Shadow Color changes the color of the Shadow using a color swatch as a reference.
  • Shadow Contrast controls the range of shades between the shadow’s darkest and lightest areas.
• Effect Blend adjusts through standard blending controls how the effect overlays onto the source.
• Effect Mix adjusts how much the effect is overlaid over the source.