Tutorial: AKVIS LightShop

Elements and their parameters

Any light effect is a set of elements that have their own parameters and modifiers. A light effect has a tree structure. The thumbnail of the selected element or a group of elements is shown in the Preview window to the right of the light effect tree.

• Adding an element to a tree

  To add a new element press and choose the element type you need out of the list of primitives. The element will be added to a tree, and in the Parameters section, you will see this element's parameters with default settings. Modifiers section will be empty.

• Creating a new group

  The tree can have a linear structure or contain subfolders - groups of elements. To create a new group press . New elements are added to a group upon pressing the button.

• Choosing an element

  To choose an element you have to click it in the tree. The line with the chosen element will be highlighted in grey, the parameters of the chosen element will be shown in the Parameters section, and its modifiers (if there are any) will show in the Modifiers section.

• Reordering elements

  You can reorder elements in a tree with and buttons. Pressing of shifts an element one-step upwards (with entering groups). Pressing of shifts an element one-step downwards (entering groups).

• Disabling an element in a light effect

  When is pressed, the Image Window shows only enabled elements of a light effect (with activated checkboxes on the left). If a checkbox is disabled the element will not be shown.

• Deleting elements

  To delete an element from the tree you should press .

All these actions (adding, deleting, reordering etc.) are extended to groups of elements as well. Groups can also be renamed, whereas elements cannot.

Under the tree, the parameters for a chosen element or a group of elements are set.

Most of parameters are the same for all elements; only a few are different.

The color for all elements is set with the help of a gradient line. The gradient line allows creating multicolor elements with a soft transition between colors.

The colors on the gradient line are distributed by sliders. Initially you have only two white sliders on the line.

You can add an infinite number of intermediate sliders between those two. A slider is added by left-clicking the gradient line.

To set a slider color you should double-click a left mouse button on it and choose a color from the Standard Color Selection Dialog box. To remove a slider from the gradient line you should click it with a pressed Ctrl key (Command in Macintosh) or use the right mouse button.

The softness of color transitions depends on how close the sliders are on the gradient line. The closer they are, the sharper is the transition.

The slider is moved on the line by dragging it with a pressed left mouse-button.

The outmost sliders can not be dragged to a new place but can be doubled. Click the left mouse-button on an outmost slider and drag it: the slider will stay at its place but a copy of it will move with the cursor; that is the new slider will have the same color as the outmost one.

All the other element parameters are set with sliding scales. To change any parameter you should move a slider by dragging it to a new place or simply clicking the desired place on a scale (the slider will move to the clicked place). Besides, you can change the parameter value by entering a number into an entry box. The value in the current entry box can also be changed by up and down arrows or a mouse wheel.

A group of elements has only two parameters Opacity and Size.

• Opacity parameter sets opacity for a group of elements. By default, opacity is set to 100%, that makes the group of elements solid. The less is the value the higher is the opacity. With opacity=0% the group of elements will be completely transparent and not visible in a light effect.
• The Size parameter increases or decreases the size of all the elements in a group. If the parameter is set to 100%, the element's size is not changed (are the same as set in the elements parameters). To increase the size of all elements in a group you should set the value of Size more than 100%, to decrease the size – less than 100%.