Introduction to Lightact
In this course, you’ll learn the basics of Lightact. Each video is dedicated to one topic and most topics are then covered in more detail in dedicated courses.
Order of execution
Layer layouts consists of nodes connected into chains. There are 2 types of chains: a lifeline chain and a sub-chain. A lifeline chain consists of nodes connected with a lifeline connection. It is shown with a lime green color and has square pins. Sub-chains, on the other hand, consist of all the nodes … Continued
Flow control
In this article, we’ll talk about Flow control nodes and how you can use them to create conditional execution flows in Lightact. Default flow control nodes Every layer layout by default includes 3 Flow control nodes: Run, On layer begin and On layer end. To explain their behavior lets look … Continued
Texture processing
Lightact has a number of texture processing nodes in Layer Layouts. You can find all of them by right-clicking in Layer Layouts and opening the Texture processing category. In this guide, we’ll explain most of them (for the sake of clarity we’ll skip the most obvious ones). Texture add Texture … Continued
Best practices
As you probably realized by now, a layer in Lightact is a very flexible concept. It can do many different things and rendering video or playing sound is just one of them. Therefore, in this article, we’ve assembled some of the best practices that will make it easier for you … Continued
Real-time chroma key
This guide explains in detail how to use Chroma key node. In short, chroma keying (or greenscreen removal) is a process of taking 2 images and compositing them together. By far the most common usage is to replace a background of an object with something else. The above operation can … Continued
Real-time color grading
In this post, we’ll dig a little deeper into the real-time color grading performed by the Texture color grading node in Layer Layouts. The node itself is very simple. In the Input texture pin, you connect the texture you want to perform color grading on. In the LUT pin, you … Continued
Easing functions
Lightact has several easing functions. To very quickly clarify what easing functions do: they map an incoming float range (usually it’s from 0-1) to a different 0-1 range. Easing functions, along with their curves are shown below and the numbers in front of their names are how you call upon them. … Continued
Interpolation nodes
Lightact has several interpolation nodes. They are used to slowly move the value of a variable towards a target. They are usually used when you want to make a value of a variable, be it a Float, Vec2, Vec3 or Color, to slowly follow a target. Some of the nodes … Continued
JSON parsing and packaging
JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a lightweight data-interchange format that is used widely across various computer applications. Lightact allows you to parse incoming JSON data stream into different Lightact variables, as well as package Lightact variables into a JSON string. An example of a simple JSON object with 3 variables … Continued
