CS Tools – Flicker

Posted purely for historical accuracy. It’s not the most useful of the CS Tools, but you may find a reason for it? Campfires? Candles? Disco Party? What are your ideas?

If you make something cool with Flicker, please post it in the comments will ya?



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67 people have commented on this post. You should too!

  1. Stathis says:

    It might be cool for something like sparkles from a cut wire or anything like that.

  2. You could use it for like light effects in a pool. Looked very pool-ish when you changed the colors to blue.

  3. kaugurs says:

    Thank you for the lessons Nick !!!!!!!!

  4. Bobby says:

    You can use it to smash open a walnut. Ooga Booga.

  5. Longone says:

    The second i saw the lights i thought of the movie “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” where the little “ships” is flying over the road.

    I don’t have time to do more than this right now, so sorry about the bad tex and rendering. Maybe someone can make something better.

    Thank you Nick for all your great tut’s!

    Cheers Jakob.

    http://vimeo.com/9889094

  6. MrMurphy says:

    You could use it for fireflies or something alike.

  7. remmac says:

    One could make a crimescene, indoors, then through the window comes the flickering of lights from police and ambulance?

  8. rt-studios says:

    or you can use it for dust particles like this:
    http://yfrog.com/bcbild17p

    it’s just a quick test, so the lighning (of the particles) isn’t perfect yet.

    @Nick: Keep it up man! I’ve learned a lot in the last year!

    Greetz Roger

  9. Ben Carroll says:

    Have a really crazy idea! Will work on it after this project I’m on.

  10. victor says:

    Thanks! Been installing and checking CS Tools, real useful!!!
    Thanks again!

  11. TJ says:

    I put “flicker” inside the ice cube from the tutorial just to see what would happen. I changed the colors to shades of blue. It turned out pretty interesting.

    http://www.vimeo.com/9899062

  12. TJ says:

    Simon, this one is for you. I animated the ice material’s displacement/noise and put the “flicker” below the surface to make a pool. Very rough, but you get the point.

    http://www.vimeo.com/9901214

  13. andrea says:

    hi guys, i have a question, it’s a bit off topic though..

    in cinema 4D, i have an animated element, i can loop it, using the command “Functions” – “Track After” – “Repeat” , now, how can i “bake” this animation, so that i can change and randomize the keys (break the curve to create a more natural loop)

    thanks!
    andrea

  14. Stefan says:

    If you export in after effect with an external compositing tag and applies particular to lights. I think you get something nice.

  15. Kate says:

    Hi Nick!
    I was just watching one of your old Photoshop tutorials in which you mentioned something about ’8bit vs 16bit’… Could you elaborate on that? Basically: pros and cons of 16bit…!?
    Thx!

  16. I decided to play around with the lovely randomness of this tool and have a Mograph tracer attached to it. Both of these are new to me so I just had some fun with it and the result ended up looked pretty sweet.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qZzx-KjT6w

  17. caio says:

    hi again man i like your tutorials in special thinks bevel tutorial: year brazilian have a power!

    so i look the tutorial and i look some things in video “hdri lighting kit” hwere i download that? please help us!

  18. Hnek Visser says:

    i used the Flicker in onjunction with some AE CC lens distorters.Te resul i getting interesting
    http://www.vimeo.com/9910969

  19. Peedy says:

    Hey,
    what do you think of the ‘house of the year’ titles on http://www.whitenoisestudios.com/work/motiongraphics
    ? It’s a show running on the BBC in northern Ireland at the minute.

    • andrea says:

      its cool..but the camera animation is so so..
      it moves too fast and those pannings made me sick :-P

    • Lukasz says:

      Overall I like the work in it, I think that you should cut it in half and snap it up. Like Andrea said, those pan across moves could be toned down. Speed up some of the animations, Re-render the logo animation you have at the end and sprinkle a teaser of it through out. Just my 2 cents.

  20. Vishal Jain says:

    Thanks for the tips Nick.
    I know you did a tut on the installation of CSTools. Could you refresh the same for 11.5? That one is a bit tricky. Thanks :)

  21. Magic says:

    I liked the idea to use flicker for fireflies, so I took 30 minutes to have a go….

    http://www.vimeo.com/9934989

  22. Lukasz says:

    What about using it to add some shine to your bevels? Or use it for a blair witch lights chasing you through a forest animation…

  23. Lukasz says:

    Off topic but how do I add my photo to your site here?

  24. Lukasz says:

    Damn, mine isn’t working either.

    • Obviously yours (and mine) works now!! I’ve been having lots of confusion with it, but after setting the rating of the icon (changing it to.. PG or G or whatever) it just appeared.. Confusing. Still have problems at other sites though..

  25. Joey says:

    WHAT A USELESS PLUGIN!! A WASTE OF TIME!

  26. Matt Key says:

    Hey Nick, I have Just used the Flicker on this 3D animation for Kaplan as an ‘inspiration plasma sphere’.

    I also used a lot of other CS tools such Sine Null (of the sphere bobbing up and down), Spring Null (for the text) and MoCam (for the some of the camera shots) Love ‘em!

    Website link – http://bit.ly/aA58oc
    Vimeo link – http://www.vimeo.com/9758079

    Cheers,
    Matt

  27. James Wicks says:

    Hey Nick,
    I noticed in this tutorial that you have some additional icons on the left side of your C4D. Would you mind sharing with us what they are, what they do, and where you got ‘em?

    Thanks,
    J

  28. Mike says:

    I used it on a disco ball, I didn’t want to use a light caustic on it and have the light coming out off the ball instead.
    Last piece of the short reel : http://www.vimeo.com/7859352

  29. flip3 says:

    This is great. thanks for the tutorials Gorilla.

  30. Deelan says:

    Hey Nick,

    something for you and the community to ponder on for these shot breakdowns…

    Quite curious how this could emulated in C4D
    1) Water droplets
    2) Ground break into a vortex

    http://vimeo.com/8235579

    • Lukasz Pason says:

      Great work! I’ve always wanted to learn Houdini. How’s the learning curve there?

    • Deelan says:

      I wish it was mine ;)

      I came across this on a forum and thought i’d post it here for any feedback.
      Never really touched the software but heard the hype when matrix came out.

      I think for this perhaps REAL FLOW may be needed on water dynamics then imported back into C4D for further work.

  31. Shawn B says:

    Im thinking DIY Flash Frames, Ambient lights for more organic fluid type simulations to just add that extra bit of surrealness.

  32. NSFR says:

    Im using the CS_tool Cluster.. im replaced the figures with different items and now they wont render in the picture viewer.. any reason why this might be happing?

  33. nonius3D says:

    I don’t think it is that stupid.
    It can be a time saving tool no?

    what about:

    * lightning flashes at night.
    * going medieval on it with torches etc.
    * old cinema projector effect dash retro stuff

    just thinkin’ out loud :-)

    great job gorilla!

    downloading your lighting toolz, 1,4 gig’s a big one :-)

  34. RussellCory says:

    I used CS Flicker to create a flickering candle’s lighting in a project a few years back. It ended up winning a Bronze Telly. So, it’s got good uses.

  35. Here’s a little test I did that incorporated flicker, If you understand expresso, this has the potential to be an incredibly useful tool, the only problem being that to make it REALLY useful, you basically have to rewire the plug-in to suit your needs, but it’s a great starting point and can save considerable work with what is already created in the xpresso tag.

    http://www.vimeo.com/11094533

  36. Thomas says:

    Thanks for your time going through all of the CS-tools, this one included! Randomness is not to laugh away :)

  37. Pingback: Graphic Tuts | CS Tools – Flicker | GreyScaleGorilla

  38. Sazarret says:

    Hey! This tool is actually very good. I wish I’d found it before for a inside club scene I made for a client a couple months ago where I had to animate all the lights by myself. Tedious!

  39. Pingback: cgiant » Blog Archive » CS Tools – Flicker

  40. Arne says:

    I’d really need the flickering of this tool but what makes it useless for me atm is that you dont have the usual light settings like visible light. Or maybe its just my inexperience and the solution is obvious.
    Any ideas Nick?

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