stars with a 3d looking trail

[Erik Waluska]

It depends on what type of animation you have in mind. But if you just want the stars to explode outward from a center point then you could draw the stars with the streak in photoshop or illustrator. Then import them into after effects and in your comp move the anchor point for each star layer to the beginning of the trail (the end opposite the star shape). Then just animate the scale and they will appear to be flying outward from the center.

-E

[Michael Szalapski]

I seem to remember there being a sample project kicking around on these forums somewhere for an effect just like you describe with stars and everything…I’ll have to see if I can find it. But, let’s assume I can’t and you go right ahead and start with these suggestions:

If you do what Erik suggested and precompose your star layers you can then add the echo effect to your precomp and you’ll have those trails behind the stars.
Aharon Rabinowitz has a tutorial that covers how to do that.
There are several tutorials for creating 3d stuff in AE. Search for 3d text; some of them may work for you.
There are also a couple of plugins out there including Zaxwerks’ Serpentine.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

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[Scott Novasic]

I would recomend creating shapes in illustrator with 2 layers The top and the trail. You can scale them similar to the photoshop sample but not have to worry about how large you go.

OR create both the face of the stars and the trail directly in AE using mask tools, anchor points and animating vertexes. I would do it this way if it were me.

good luck

SuperNova
Animation & Visual Effects
Scott Novasic
Los Angeles Ca
web:https://web.mac.com/finaleffects