What's New in Knoll Light Factory 3

Knoll Light Factory 3 is packed with new features and a redesigned interface, while keeping all the best features and functions of Knoll Light Factory 2.7.

New Lens Designer interface

The Lens Editor has been completely redesigned into a brand new Lens Designer interface. It's very fun and easy to use.

Redesigned interface. The Lens Designer interface has been fully redeveloped with a clean workflow, and new visual controls for layering and previewing a flare. This interface gives you a lot of visual feedback while you are designing your lens flare. Read more

More Lens Flare Presets. There are over 100 pre-built lens flare effects that you can use as-is, or as starting points for custom effects. Read more

More Built-in Elements. We’ve crafted more light elements to build your flare. There are now 28 Elements, with additions like Star Filter and Lens Texture, that replicate reflections from the real world. Read more

New Sprite category. We added a new category of light objects called Sprites. There are over 50 static shapes, like Prism Streak and Star, that can further customize your flare. Read more

New Element Presets. Get pre-made settings for the Built-in Elements. The three Element Preset groups offer over 50 presets that are based on real-world lens flare technology. Read more

New plug-in controls and organization

There are a lot of new parameters in the Effects palette, and you will also notice new parameter groups. Parameters have been grouped for easier access. Parameters that were ungrouped in the KLF 2.5 Effects palette are now in organized parameter groups.

New Behaviors. The new Behaviors group adds pre-built light animations to Knoll Light Factory. The options are Blink, Pulse, flicker and strobe.

New Edge Reaction. The new Edge Reaction group cause the lens elements to fade out or flare up as the lens leaves or enters the edge of the comp.

Work with AE lights. Knoll 3 now integrates with the 3D environment of After Effects. These Location features can link lens flares with AE comp lights; use the properties of an AE light; and delay behaviors across multiple lights.

More Obscuration. New Obscuration controls can better hide the flare, making the light appear to pass behind objects like a tree or a spaceship.

All plug-ins now rolled into one

Get ready for an easier, streamlined workflow. In Knoll Light Factory 2.5, you could build a flare in one of two ways. One, you use the Lens Editor, which was easier to use but didn't allow for a lot of layering or for keyframing. Two, you could layer the individual plug-ins to create a light effect, which also let you keyframe the values in the timeline. In Knoll Light Factory 3.0, there is one terrific method that combines these two ways. You build your flare in the newly revamped Lens Designer. Then you keyframe the effect in the host app's timeline.