How would one go about producing this effect?

[Kevin Camp]

if you want a poor man’s attempt (ie, ae effects only), try playing around with turbulent displace, scatter (or cc scatterize) and cc radial fast blur.

to colorize it, try adding channel combiner (from ‘alpha’, to ‘lightness’) and the tritone effect and pick the colors.

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Colin O’brien]

Any suggestions on how the slashes of light were made, after the reveal?

[Kevin Reiner]

I agree with Dave. Although it might be Trapcode Form for the beginning, with Trapcode Shine making the light effect, and then Trapcode Particular for the shiny crescents at the end. Check the Trapcode website – they have a lot of tutorials that might lead you in the right direction, and I also think you can download the plugins in demo mode. Good luck.

System Setup (for a more detailed list, see my profile)

HARDWARE
Mac Pro 2 x 3 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
9GB Memory
Two 16x SuperDrives
Dual-channel 2Gb Fibre Channel PCI Express card
Apple Cinema HD Display (23″ flat panel)
ATI Radeon X1900 XT Graphics Card
AJA Kona LHe SD/HD capture card
Apple Xserve Raid 5.6TB

SOFTWARE
Mac OS X 10.4.11
Final Cut Pro Studio 2
After Effects CS3
Photoshop CS3
Illustrator CS3
Boris Continuum 5
Sapphire Plug Ins
Roxio Toast
Digital Anarchy Anarchist Suite
ParticleIllusion 3.0
Trapcode
Zaxwerks

[Kevin Reiner]

My guess would be Trapcode 3D stroke.

I think the designer who made that animation had just bought the Trapcode Suite and just went to town. 😉

System Setup (for a more detailed list, see my profile)

HARDWARE
Mac Pro 2 x 3 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
9GB Memory
Two 16x SuperDrives
Dual-channel 2Gb Fibre Channel PCI Express card
Apple Cinema HD Display (23″ flat panel)
ATI Radeon X1900 XT Graphics Card
AJA Kona LHe SD/HD capture card
Apple Xserve Raid 5.6TB

SOFTWARE
Mac OS X 10.4.11
Final Cut Pro Studio 2
After Effects CS3
Photoshop CS3
Illustrator CS3
Boris Continuum 5
Sapphire Plug Ins
Roxio Toast
Digital Anarchy Anarchist Suite
ParticleIllusion 3.0
Trapcode
Zaxwerks

[Colin O’brien]

Thanks for shedding some light on this, it has helped a lot and I appreciate it.

I will be experimenting with some of the Trapcode plugins.