本视频教程是由Digital-Tutors 机构出品的AE灯光阴影动画视频教程，时长：2小时43分，大小：1.54 GB，格式：FLV高清视频，附工程源文件，教程使用软件：After Effects CS6，作者：Laura Smith，官方发布时间：2013年1月28日，语言：英语。。

After Effects是Adobe公司推出的一款图形视频处理软件，适用于从事设计和视频特技的机构，包括电视台、动画制作公司、个人后期制作工作室以及多媒体工作室。而在新兴的用户群，如网页设计师和图形设计师中，也开始有越来越多的人在使用After Effects。属于层类型后期软件。

Digital-Tutors机构是号称全球最大的CG付费教程网站，2000多万次视频播放记录，顶级客户的优秀项目实例，被誉为教学和娱乐结合的最好的教程，RenderMan创建人称之为“完美的学习站点”，成立至今已经有12年之久，内容集中在视频制作和游戏制作两大板块，其网站完整的教学的理念，先进的技术支持（他们甚至开启了移动手机看教程的计划，支持IPAD/IPHONE/ANDROID），都让人耳目一新。尤其是多层级的教学难度设置，有趣的考试内容，时不时的竞赛，让DT成为非常活跃的一个CG机构。

Digital-Tutors Using Lights to Create Shadows for Animated Layers in After Effects

In this series of After Effects tutorials, we will discuss the steps we take to set up this winter scene; complete with lights, shadows, lens flares and many more realistic effects.

We will start by building the layout for the simple sky and ground layers and then rather than just jumping right in and adding trees all over this ground, we build a series of precomposed layers with our trees. While this does take more time to set up initially, it makes for easy updates later in the project.

We then jump into adding our light and learning how to adjust the settings on our light, and on the layers affected by the light, to give us some insight into how we get the best possible shadows out of our setup. We talk about some really valuable expressions that we use to track a light to our camera and track the lensflare to our light, but these expressions can be used for lots of different After Effects projects and are great to implement in any projects you tackle with tricky 3D layer tracking.

We also delve into creating atmospheric distortion with a light. This distortion follows our camera and gives faraway objects that hazy look. This is a technique that could be used in infinite ways for more projects than just what we create in this course. We finish off by adding some lens effects that make our scene appear as if it were shot with a real camera.