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Activity Forums Adobe After Effects solid motion trails

  • solid motion trails

    Posted by Geoff Swartz on February 19, 2008 at 8:02 pm

    Does anyone know of an effect to create motion trails from a pre comp? I have a shot of video and I applied a star mask to it with a 5 unit stroke. I’m then using that comp in another comp and animating it in 3d to zoom in toward the camera. As it zooms in I want it to have motion trails but I can’t seem to get it. I’ve tried using the echo filter but haven’t had much luck getting it to look the way I want.

    Ideally I am trying to get a look like the I love the 80s shows where the streaks are more solid behind the object with a rainbow of colors. Does anyone know how else I could create this? Thanks.

    Geoff Swartz replied 18 years, 3 months ago 2 Members · 3 Replies
  • 3 Replies
  • Reynolds Strother

    February 19, 2008 at 9:54 pm

    Motion trails are best done with echo when it comes to the AE built in effects. You can try the CC Particle Generator that comes with AE. Check out Andrew Kramers tutorial which uses something that may work for you.

    3D Stroke

    There is some expressions you could use but they would only achieve something similar to echo. Sounds like you need a plug-in. Trapcode Particular is top notch for stuff like this.
    I’ve used echo to get effects similar this. Mess around with the setting for echo to see if you can refine what you after.

    Try finding a link to an example. Maybe I could help you more if I saw something.

  • Reynolds Strother

    February 20, 2008 at 12:08 am

    not sure if you watched this tutorial or not. I saw this right after that last post.

    https://library.creativecow.net/articles/rabinowitz_aharon/Echo_Time/video-tutorial.php

  • Geoff Swartz

    February 20, 2008 at 12:55 am

    Thank you! I did see another tutorial on using echo by someone else but it didn’t address precomps and animation. And this one specifically mentioned the echo time setting which ended up being the reason mine wasn’t working as I hoped.

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