What is Knoll Light Factory?

Knoll Light Factory has long been Hollywood's favorite way to add color, depth and excitement to a scene. Now ILM Visual Effects Supervisor John Knoll has created an all-new light effects tool by adding his lens flare technology from recent feature films. With Knoll Light Factory 3, you get new features like realistic flare elements, time-saving animation behaviors, a redesigned interface, and over 100 beautifully designed presets. John Knoll’s new technology delivers the sexiness of lens flares while creating believable, accurate results. Learn about the Knoll 3 interface and the new Lens Designer.

The custom Lens Designer that is part of Knoll Light Factory 3.

The story of Knoll Light Factory

VFX Supervisor John Knoll is the pioneer in developing artificial lens flares and light effects. The same code that John released for the After Effects versions of Knoll Light Factory back in the 1990’s has been used inside Industrial Light & Magic for over a decade. In the past, the lens flare render engine—the heart of Light Factory—has been used by a variety of artists (including John) at ILM.

A host of artificial lens flares created with the lens engine have been used in prominent feature films. For Mission Impossible in the 1990’s, the lens flare engine added realistic looking lights to CG elements. In the recent Star Wars films, the lens engine was used to add glints and light reflections to spacecraft shots. Artists used the lens engine on more recent films such as Star Trek, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol and Ironman 2 to add photorealistic looking flares.

John’s work on recent films fueled his desire to update the lens flare engine with new flare elements and features. In Knoll Light Factory 3, these new elements and features let John create new presets that expand the visual range and capabilities of his signature light effects tool. See what's new

What is a lens flare?

Knoll Light Factory is famous for its high-fidelity simulations of light effects called lens flares. What is a lens flare? Flares simulate reflections from a very bright light source as seen through a camera's lens.

Camera lenses are complex devices. Most lenses contain many separate glass elements in order to form a sharp, clear image. While the function of a lens is to bend light onto the exposure surface, all the elements inside a lens reflect a small percentage of the light that strikes them. Anti reflective coatings on the lens elements minimize these reflections, so that ghost images do not appear in the picture. The anti-reflective coatings reduce the brightness of the reflections to the point that they are too dim to photograph.

Lens flares are the result of photographing bright lights either on film or video. When a very bright light like the sun or a stadium light is photographed, the reflections themselves are bright enough to show up. It is a misconception that lens flares are mistakes. Flares are frequently used to create an effect. Directors may test a variety of lenses to find one with a particular look to suit their style or provide a particular effect for a single shot.