I'll start by saying I'm not asking for lighting. I was actually just curious since so many have mentioned it there is any 2D animation packages that provide some way of simulating lighting by placing lights. I'm just curious how you would do this.
I spent the last few hours thinking on it and created a png mask to simulate the curved area of a sphere and then tried every grouping permution and mask setting I could think of but nadda. You can sort of do it but I had to group the 'light' with each shape so you have to turn this 'light' all the time to face the global direction you want light for from your scene. Sorry I know it sounds wierd but I sort of have the idea clear in my head.
Anyway I am curious how other products -if any- 'solve' this.
Hmm... I've thought about a solution, but I havn't tried it yet. If you had a particle layer shooting very blury white dots. If this particle layer was shooting the dots away from the camera (by rotating the particle layer with 45 degrees) and sort all layers by true distance. Then the question is (I can't try it myself at the moment): Will the entier particle layer be sorted, or will every individual particle be sorted. If it's the entire layer, my idea won't work, but otherwise...
If it works the particle layers will be visible untill the go past an other layer. It would look like a light.
Programs like After Effects and the Freeware program Wax by Debugmode have lighting options. I think a fall-off for light like the depth-of-field with sharpness would help a lot. Now I sometimes darken graphics in the background but that effect doesn't work when moving the camera. You can also render graphics with lighting in another program (baking textures). I like the particle idea, if I find the time I'd like to experiment with that but I'm afraid it will only depth sort on the origin of the particle layer.
Sounds interesting, will give Wax a try this weekend. I'm poking at masks a bit more as there is a tiny idea floating around but nothing solid. If anyone has lighting experiments or tricks they want to share consider posting them here.
I was actually just curious since so many have mentioned it there is any 2D animation packages that provide some way of simulating lighting by placing lights. I'm just curious how you would do this.