creating a matte from motionpath

[Ben The camera guy]

do you have a particle generator (like particular?). If so, you can animate the emitter position property, copying the bee location to this property, then bring it into your bee comp as a luma matte to an adjustment layer with a blur on it…this way the blur is only seen when the particles from the emitter are there…pm or email me if this explanaton confuses you…

[Fabiano Peres]

You can also use the write-on effect to revel the layer you want, take a look at this video turorial, it’s really worth. https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/page_wrapper.cgi?forumid=2&page=https://www.creativecow.net/articles/hansen_jaysen/growing/index.html

I hope it helps

[Fabiano Peres]

Sorry, I mean “Reveal”

[Nicholas Toth]

If you have the new particular, set up a light to follow your bees exact position, and then use the MOTION PATH option.
The particles will follow the bee, and if you set the life properly, they will dissolve through time.

If the comp is only 2d (3d won’t work), then I’d say use a null and some simple pickwhip expressions so the nulls position is EXACTLY the same as the bees, and then keyframe assistant/convert expression to keyframes. Select all of those keyframes and copy them. Create a new layer the size of your composition, and use the pen tool to make a SINGLE point. Bring up your mask options and place a keyframe on ‘mask shape.’ Select the keyframe, and then paste the keyframes from the position. I’d say use vegas to make a flowing trail behind it, use it as an alpha, a glow trail, whatever you want, but most importantly just for reference behind the bee.

I’m sure this could be done about fifty different ways, but thats my approach.

[Frank Feijen]

Thanks guys, i haven’t got particular but got it to work with CC particle system II.