The key thing to understanding how this works is that Pretty Particles comes with (invisible) coin-shaped “spawners” that you cast a spell effect upon (with attached VFX), and the spell then applies the particle effect to physical objects (not dummies/characters) in a given area. Importantly for us, the spawner continues to apply it to whatever objects enter the area. Guess what are objects… Lighty Lights markers!
1. Enter photo mode. Ideally, get your character dummies set up and posed, and get your “I’ll definitely be using these” Lighty Lights (LL) set up as well. SAVE YOUR DUMMIES’ POSITIONS in LL PRIOR to exiting photo mode and note down any poses/post-processing etc. that you’ll want on the final scene.
2. Determine where you want the most noticeable aspects of your Pretty Particles (PP) effect to be. Place the PP spawner in that area. REMEMBER: the more physical items present in the area of effect (AoE), the more particles you will get. This can even include things like walls or furniture depending on the location, so you will have to play around with your particular shoot and environment. The multiplication effect is also more noticeable on some PP effects than on others. Also remember that there are usually MANY more particles visible in photo mode than will be visible outside of it.
3. Enter photo mode again, and roughly place your dummies/re-set the camera. Observe how the existing PP effects look. If you don’t like the placement (e.g. a big sparkle on someone’s face), just keep exiting and re-entering photo mode until you like where your “base” PP effects are and how they look (remember–they’re dynamic). If you’re really struggling, cancel the PP spell(s) and try again.
4. Once you like how the basic PP effect looks, go ahead and stay in photo mode and reconstruct the shot and the positions from Step 1. Based on your personal preferences, you might find it useful to enable your Depth of Field at this stage.
5. Create a light in LL. Turn it down to 0 in power (so that when you toggle all on/off for other lighting work you aren’t getting some insanity). Leave the marker visible for now.
6. Start moving that light created in 5 around, and observe how the PP effect follows your new light. Play around with position to your heart’s content until you have an effect and placement that you like. Rotational tools also mix up the particle effect.
7. Once you like any option that you have created, use the “Duplicate” feature of Lighty Lights. This essentially will lock in the placement that you like and let you continue to play around.
8. Whenever you’re tired of making PP variations, you can cycle through your Created Lights (use the hotkeys for your sanity) to see all of the permutations. Remember: any original “real” (lit) lights you made in Step 1 are among these, so you should move these lights with care!
9. Take your photos and try out how the final effect looks. Hot sampling has a HUGE effect on PP in particular!
10. ???
11. Profit!
A few other notes:
– You can place the initial Pretty Particles spawner somewhere where it’s likely to spawn effects that are not especially noticeable (or completely editable-out) in the final version of the cropped shot, then use the above to introduce PP only where you want them, more or less.
– You can also do the above trick to mix up different kinds of PP. Just remember to bring along as many people to your photo shoot as there are PP effects you might want to be active at any given time.
– Remember that any lights you placed in Step 1 that are in the PP AoE are going to be affecting Step 3, too, so tab through your lights to see what’s based around the LL markers and what’s “true environmental.”
– Usekeybindsusekeybindsusekeybindsusekeybindsusekeybindsusekeybindsusekeybindsusekey
bindsusekeybindsusekeybindsusekeybinds 🙂
– Theoretically, if you have a fairly restricted environment without a lot of objects, you can also use “Move Here” to maneuver those objects as well to change up the “original” PP effects that you decide on in Step 3. However, you’ll have to manually move them back out to change the particles, and they won’t change at the click of a button like the LL markers will.