Particle question, trying to achieve this effect

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

I know you can create this look in Particular if you animate a custom particle to create the impression of reflection. Create a simple disk and animate a light sweep on it. Add a blur if you want soft edges.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Walter Soyka]

[Adam Lewen] “I got a good suggestion over at the Video Copilot forum to try the Camera Lens Blur to get the shimmer/glassy look. Although the progress, I am still unhappy with the result and looking for some tips in getting this realistic glassy particle effect.”

Which part of the look are you going for?

The softness either comes from a blur or a depth-of-field effect. CC Particle World has no DoF that I’m aware of, but you could emulate the look by stacking a couple copies of the effect on different layers with the emitters at different depths, and with different blur settings.

The glitter (particle seems to momentarily disappear, then reappear) can be done in CC Particle World with opacity mapping — just draw spikes into the opacity map.

CC Particle World also supports custom particles (all the “Textured” options) if you want to use a custom-animated particle as Ted has suggested with Trapcode Particular. That said, I don’t want to discourage you from looking at Particular — I consider it a must-have plugin for more involved particle simulations in AE.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
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[Adam Lewen]

Thanks for the replies gentleman!
I am very close to get what I am looking for. At this point my issue will hopefully be solved by tweaking.
That is that glass/glitter particle look I am after… (this is the ref for the look
https://www.istockphoto.com/stock-video-14569555-snowfall-defocus-loop.php?st=34da903.
I learned that there are many ways to achieve it, for example;
sweeping light, as Ted suggested
letting a fractal layer control the “glitter”
And I assume some new features in Particular’s shading are related, but I am still trying to figure it out.
Hopefully will upload / share when I figure it to perfection.

[Adam Lewen]

Eventually I got the nicest glitter with a similar method to Michael Park’s great tutorial on the subject;
https://library.creativecow.net/articles/park_michael/advanced_glitter.php
I know that nowadays there are ways of achieving it through the plugin itself, and I guess I should find a good recourse of learning what’s new 🙂

Thanks for your input guys!