List of Built-in Elements

Built-in Elements are 28 flexible light objects that you can layer to build up a lens flare design. Most Built-in Elements are original light elements from Knoll Light Factory 2.7. We've also added eight new elements based on John Knoll's newer lens flare technology.

In the Lens Designer, you choose the Built-in Elements from the Elements Panel. Make sure to read about the Element Controls that modify Built-in Elements.

Another kind of light object called Sprites is explained on this page. Built-in Elements are also part of Element Presets, which are shown on this page.

This page lists and explains the 28 Built-in Elements. The best way to understand each Element is to experiment with its settings.

Aperture Reflection |  | Most film cameras will exhibit some aperture reflection. In a film camera, the film passes through the movement, where it is exposed to light. The movement has a rectangular hole called the gate. The focused image from the lens shines through the gate and onto the film. In most cameras, this aperture is polished stainless steel, and is highly reflective. When the focused image of a bright light gets close to or slightly outside the edge of frame, the image can reflect off of this shiny surface back into the image causing an aperture reflection.

NOTE: To see the effect, the light source location must be outside the edge of the frame.

Element Controls: Outer Color, Inner Color, Brightness, Scale, Spread, Width, Noise, Size, Aperture Offset, Do Core

Barrel |  | New to Knoll Light Factory 3.0. Barrel is a reflection that occurs between the surface of lens element and the inside barrel of the lens. The more air/glass interfaces in a lens, the more light that will potentially be reflected. Modern zoom lenses often contain a large number of individual lenses inside their barrels.

Element Controls: Color, Position, Brightness, Scale, Softness, Horizontal Skew, Vertical Skew, Spread Width, Element Count, Random Seed 1

Chroma Fan |  | Chroma Fan generates a rainbow diffraction patterns. These patterns often appear when a net is used for diffusion over the lens, or when there is fog or mist in the air. Element Controls: Color, Position, Brightness, Scale, Softness, Angle, Anamorphic, Cycles, Density, Spread, Radial Offset, Noise, Taper
Chroma Hoop |  | Chroma Hoop creates a circle of rainbow lines that streak through the center of the light source. This type of effect is frequently seen on film shot in Super35 format. Element Controls: Color, Position, Brightness, Apogee Scale, Softness, Chroma Spread, Anamorphic, Density, Noise, Arc Completeness

Circle Spread |  | Circle Spread lets you create a number of randomly sized and positioned circles. The controls are similar to those in Polygon Spread. Circle Spread is useful for making the tiny dots and small circles that appear in lens flares. Element Controls: Color, Position, Brightness, Scale, Vertical Spread, Horizontal Spread, Anamorphic, Element Count, Size Rand Seed, Brightness Random Seed, Color Random Seed, Noise Type, Noise Position, Noise Amount, Noise Scale

Disc |  | Disc gives you precise control over the generation of a single circular ramp effect. It has three separate controls for the inner, middle and outer gamma. It also has taper and center offset controls that change the shape of the disc. Element Controls: Color, Position, Brightness, Scale, Position Tracking, Offset X, Offset Y, Softness, Taper Angle, Anamorphic, Center Offset, Inside Ramp Width, Middle Ramp Width, Outside Ramp Width, Smoothing, Noise Type, Noise Position, Noise Amount, Noise Scale

Ellipse |  | Ellipse is like Disc, except that its shape is elliptical, not perfectly circular. In general, the glow at the light source is circular, and reflected elements are elliptical. Element Controls: Color, Position, Brightness, Scale, Position Tracking, Offset X, Offset Y, Softness, Taper Angle, Anamorphic, Center Offset, Inside Ramp Width, Middle Ramp Width, Outside Ramp Width, Noise Type, Noise Position, Noise Amount, Noise Scale
Elliptical Caustic |  | Elliptical Caustic simulates a unique distorted reflection that is found primarily in Nikon still camera lenses. Element Controls: Color, Position, Brightness, Scale, Anamorphic
Fading Ring |  | Faded Ring generates a 'rainbow ring' effect that fades out toward the edges of the frame. Element Controls: Position, Brightness, Scale, Anamorphic
Glow Ball |  | Glow Ball is a basic primitive used in most flares and effects. The glow represents the overexposure and light scattering that a bright light source creates when focused through a lens onto an image plane. You can control the color and scale of the glow, as well as the rendering of a characteristic red ring associated with a bright light source.

Element Controls: Inner Color, Outer Color, Position, Ring Brightness, Ramp Scale, Ramp Scale, Ring Softness, Ring Size, Anamorphic, Ramp Gamma, Show Ring, Noise Type, Noise Position, Noise Amount, Noise Scale

Guides |  | New to Knoll Light Factory 3.0. This is not actually a lens flare element! The Guides places a grid and position/orientation marker on the flare preview. Element Controls: Marker Color, Grid Color, Show Grid, Grid Divisions, Show Markers
Horizontal Spread |  | New to Knoll Light Factory 3.0. Many anamorphic lenses exhibit streaks around the center of the lens. Horizontal Spread renders several tapered lines with adjustable color, brightness, position and spread. Element Controls: Color, Position, Brightness, Scale, Horizontal Spread, Vertical Spread, Position Tracking, Offset X, Offset Y, Softness, Spread Tracking, Horizontal Aspect, Vertical Aspect, Number of Elements, Random Seed 1, Hue Offset

Image Sprite |  | Image Sprite lets add your own image as the light effect source. A Browse window lets you choose any bitmap file, like JPG or PNG. It's a way to bring in a flare element that you've created and use it for your lighting effect. In the example at left, we imported the Red Giant logo as a PNG file with alpha transparency.

Every Sprite has an Image Sprite control. The Image Sprite element is simply a solo way to import your custom sprite, and it will display the name of the file that you've imported. Image Sprites and Sprites have the same controls available.

Element Controls: Tint, Position, Brightness, Scale X, Scale Y, Maintain Aspect Ratio, Position Tracking, Offset X, Offset Y, Blur Amount, Rotation, Tint Amount, Sprite Image, Center Fade Rate, Center Fade, Align to Source

Lens Texture |  | New to Knoll Light Factory 3.0. Lens Texture is an easy way to add fake grime to your lens flare. This element adds to the overall realism of the effect because it simulates grime on the camera lens that is reflected in the flare. The texture is applied to the whole frame, but its default settings only illuminate the brightest areas of the light effect.

Element Controls: Brightness, Scale, Texture Density, Softness, Texture, Show Mask

Photon Spike |  | As the name implies, this effect generates the 'Photon torpedo' effect from science fiction films that creator John Knoll has worked on over the years. Element Controls: Color, Position, Brightness, Scale, Element Count, Random Seed 1
Poly Spike |  | Poly Spike creates an effect similar to Random Fan but with much wider areas of light and dark. The filter tends to render much faster than Random Fan, which can produce an acceptable alternative much more quickly. Element Controls: Color, Position, Brightness, Scale, Angle, Anamorphic, Element Count, Random Seed 1, Random Seed 2

Polygon Spread |  | The polygonal opening of a bladed aperture can cause many polygonal reflections to appear on the exposure surface. Polygon Spread creates a number of randomly positioned polygonal reflections, each with a different brightness and random hue. Since these reflections are created randomly, there are three different random seeds used to vary the look.

NOTE: There is a relationship between F-stops, polygonal reflections and star filters. A lens that is ‘wide open’ (F-stop set to its minimum value) usually exhibits circular reflections. As the aperture closes down, the shape of the aperture changes the reflections to polygon shapes, and a ‘star filter’ usually appears at the source.

Element Controls: Color, Position, Brightness, Scale, Vertical Spread, Horizontal Spread, Angle, Anamorphic, Element Count, Sides, Size Rand Seed, Brightness Rand Seed, Color Rand Seed, Noise Type, Noise Position, Noise Amount, Noise Scale

Random Fan |  | Random Fan generates an attractive asymmetrical fan of spikes with many radial lines. RandomFan responds to the angle control with a subtle shimmering of the lines. Element Controls: Color, Position, Brightness, Scale, Angle, Element Count, Random Seed 1

Rectangular Spread |  | New to Knoll Light Factory 3.0. Many anamorphic lenses exhibit streaks around the center of the lens. Rectangular Spread generates horizontal bars which emulate that effect. Element Controls: Color, Position, Brightness, Scale, Horizontal Spread, Vertical Spread, Softness, Horizontal Aspect, Vertical Aspect, Number of Elements, Random Seed 1, Random Seed 2, Hue Offset

Single Poly |  | The Single Polygon filter is appropriately named with complete controls for generating a single polygon shape. You can control the position, brightness, color, size, number of sides, softness, rotation, and the degree to which it varies in brightness as it moves from the center of frame to the edge.

Element Controls: Color, Position, Brightness, Scale, Softness, Angle, Anamorphic, Sides, Center Fade, Center Fade Rate, Sides, Noise Type, Noise Position, Noise Amount, Noise Scale

Sparkle |  | Sparkle generates a number of short linear streaks radially distributed about the center. The streaks change with the angle control by appearing closer or farther from the center of the source location. The Unidirectional checkbox limits the motion to all inward or all outward (depending on what direction the angle control is moving). This effect can simulate the sparkle you see when a laser is pointed into a camera lens.

Element Controls: Color, Position, Brightness, Scale, Anamorphic, Element Count, Random Seed 1, Random Seed 2, One Way

Spike Ball |  | Most lenses exhibit at least a little bit of radial streaking from the light source, and the Spike Ball simulates this. The lines in the Spikes appear as random lines from the center of the ball. You have control over the scale, brightness, density, color, rotation, and the random seed used to generate the spikes.

Element Controls: Color, Position, Brightness, Scale, Angle, Anamorphic, Spike Count, Random Seed

Star Caustic |  | This diamond-shaped caustic is useful for simulating reflections caused by reflective coatings. You will notice that the default values cause a barely visible green shape. Element Controls: Color, Position, Brightness, Scale, Anamorphic
Star Filter |  | This version of Star Filter has been preserved to properly open legacy projects created with Knoll Light Factory 2.7 and earlier. For better results in new projects, please use Star Filter (new), which is explained below. Star Filter simulates a common effect created by multiple bladed apertures. Most camera lenses contain multiple bladed apertures to allow more or less light to pass through the lens. This controls the exposure of the image. When the aperture is wide open, the opening is perfectly circular. As the lens is 'stopped down', the opening becomes a smaller polygonal shape.

For example, a five-bladed aperture will create an opening with five sides as the lens is stopped down. This is why you often see pentagonal or hexagonal shapes on a lens flare. The aperture also reflects light where the blades intersect, creating a star filter effect. A partially closed five-bladed aperture will reflect five streaks, for example, and result in a ten-point star on the exposed surface.

Element Controls: Color, Position, Brightness, Scale, Softness, Angle, Anamorphic, Element Count, Width, Thick

Star Filter (new) |  | New to Knoll Light Factory 3. We created Star Filter (new) by revisiting the original Star Filter and shifted the draw pattern from lines to polygons. This gives you smoother more natural results with no rendering artifacts. Otherwise, this Element behaves like the Star Filter, which is explained above, with some differences in their controls.

Element Controls: Color, Position, Brightness, Scale, Inner Scale, Width, Fall off, Angle, Anamorphic, Element Count

Stripe |  | Stripe renders a tapered line with adjustable color, width, angle, brightness and position. Many anamorphic lenses exhibit a blue horizontal streak through the center, and some video cameras exhibit a reddish vertical streak through the center.

Element Controls: Outer Color, Center Color, Position, Brightness, Length, Position Tracking, Offset X, Offset Y, Softness, Angle, Render Center Line

Tilted Ellipses |  | New to Knoll Light Factory 3. Tilted Ellipses generates ellipses that are aligned with the center point of your lens flare. They emulate ellipses in photography that are caused by internal lens reflections on an object as it is picked up by the lens sensor.

Element Controls: Color, Position, Brightness, Scale, Softness, Spread, Eccentricity, Number of Ellipses, Clipping Rand. Seed

Vertical Polyspread |  | New to Knoll Light Factory 3. Vertical Polyspread simulates the type of inter-reflections that occur between cylindrical elements of an anamorphic lens. This effect shows up most commonly on anamorphic zoom lenses. Zoom lenses typically contain many more lens elements than a prime lens, so the number of reflections is proportional to the complexity of the lens.

Element Controls: Color, Position, Brightness, Scale, Softness, Spread Width, Horizontal Aspect, Vertical Aspect, Element Count, Size, Round Seed, Brightness Rand Seed, Color Rand Seed, Noise, Type, Noise Position, Noise Amount, Noise Scale