DIRECTIONAL LIGHT WRAP....

For one particular shot, there was too much hair noise on the left, which really became apparent when a regular lightwrap was applied....so, if I want the lightwrap to appear from one side only, I can apply a directional lightwrap

Below: Lightwrap matte layer, with a bevelled alpha effect, showing just the light wrap on the left

Composited image, showing the light wrap on the right hand side only

Image below: without lightwrap...there is a visible dark grey line around the edge of the hand, which shows up particularly in front of the lighter background

With the lightwrap applied

See additional notes highlighted in green:

Adding a lightwrap blur around keyed green screen footage in After Effects:

Malcolm Finnie at DJCAD created this great workflow instruction for creating a lightwrap in After Effects.

Essentially this process takes a matte from the foreground image (in the case my green screen footage of Kerry) and creates a duplicated outline, slightly blurred, and reflecting the light levels of the background below (in this case sky).

The process:

You will need a foreground and background on separate layers.

Make sure each layer is pre-composed.

• Select your foreground layer and add Effects>Blur & Sharpen>Channel Blur
• Set Alpha Bluriness>1.0
• Under Edge Behaviour, tick Repeat Edge Pixels
• Right Click this layer and choose Pre-Compose...(choose Move All Attributes to the new composition)
• Name it Foreground Blurred

Duplicate the Background layer and call it Light Wrap

Place the Light Wrap layer on top of Foreground Blurred

• On Light Wrap choose Effects>Channel>Set Matte
• Set Take Matte from layer > Foreground Blurred
• Tick Invert Matte
• Choose Effects>Blur & Sharpen>Fast Blur (depending on your version of AE, search for this in the effects library - it may be listed as obsolete but can still be used)
• Set Blurriness > 30
• Tick Repeat Edge Pixels
• Set Transfer Mode > Add
• Adjust Opacity as necessary
• Duplicate Set Matte and move to the bottom of the list
• Untick Invert Matte

Directional Light Wrap

• Duplicate foreground blurred
• Name this layer Light Wrap Matte
• Choose Effects>Generate>Fill
• Set colour>black
• Choose Effects>Perspective>Bevel Alpha
• Set Edge Thickness>20
• Set Light Angle to match your scene
• Select the light wrap layer
• Set Track Matte>Luma Matte "Light Wrap Matte"