Here comes the rain again... (Top Tip)

[Rob Neal]

As Andrew's been doing a double episode of tutorials featuring rain, I'm surprised he didn't include a useful routine from Mark Christiansens' book "After Effects Professional Studio Techniques":

Whether you use real rain clips or a particle system, rain is not grey, but a diffused transparency.
Create a new adjustment layer below your rain layer, and switch off the rain layer and track matte the new adjustment layer to it.

Add fast blur at about 200 and levels with white at about 90% and black at 80%. Basically it darkens the light areas, and lightens the dark ones, and adds diffusion throughout, but doesn't affect the colour content.

He used it all the way through "The Day after Tomorrow", and I seem to remember a fair bit of drizzle in that one.

Hope somebody out there finds this useful,
Rob

[tony]

hmm cool technique i will try it out.

[robbie1985]

That is the kind of post that I love this forum for, a new angle on something we've already seen to help everybody improve

Thanks, I personally will put this to great use in a music video I have coming up involving zombies!