Time Lapse traffic effect (night)

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

If it’s just a still you’re better off using Photoshop to do this.
Just build some streaks of color matching the color of the lights, blur them, add glow and play with compositing modes (add, screen…etc)

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior Compositor/VFX Artist

[Paul Wright]

Thanks for getting back so quick.

ah ok, I get you on the photoshop front, but its for a looping video, hence why the after effects query.

Have I missed the point? Or did I not make the point 🙁 Not sure.

Thanks again though. Rapid! 🙂

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

Not really sure I get what you’re after, but if you want to create light streaks in AE not using Particular (the iPod style light streaks)you need some sort of movement for the light sources, thus footage and not a still. With movement you can use 32bit, glow and frame blending to play around. On a still….? maybe if you animate some dots, precomp and use the above mentioned.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior Compositor/VFX Artist

[Paul Wright]

Sorry guys, me mentioning the still has confused things. The still is a high up skyline where the street is barley visible except for small headlights.

I wanted to layer whatever effect I creted over the top of the still to create the illusion. I think I may have sorted it by creating some streaks with a vegas, then animating a mask over the top as if the car has gone. Then, duplicated the layer, off set it in the timeline and used the liquify tool to make the streaks uneven (as if the car has gone over bumps) added a glow and bobs your uncle. light streaks. Precompose and add as many times as you like.

Thanks for getting back to me guys, it was my mentioning the still confused the issue. And I know that by definition, stills dont move 😉

Paul

[Kevin Camp]

if you have footage (and it’s a night shot with enough cars to make it work), then you may be able to use a time effect like echo, cc wide time or cc time blend to composite frames on frames, which will start to create motion blur/light streaks as you increase the number of frames that get composited.

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW