twinkle twinkle little star

[Aharon Rabinowitz]

Man that was funny. Seriously.

OK. If you have After Effects 6.5, that means you probably have the Digital Anarchy 3D assistants which are on the same install CD.

There are 3 plugins in the pack – The Cubic Distribution Light Plug-in alow you to duplicate and place layers within the space of a cubic area with dimensions you set – so if you set it to 2000, 2000, 2000 it will duplicate the layers and randomly place them in 3D space – but within the cubic area of 2000 pixels from the center of the comp.

OK, so first create a few different flat star shapes, and give them an expression that wiggles their opacity. Something like:

wiggle(3,50)

which will make the opacity change 3 times a second up to 50 units (or percentage’s) You can play with that number.

You might want to vary the numbers by creating several layers with slightly different numbers so that there is a bit more randomness.

Select all of the layers, Make them 3D and then go to:

Window > Cubic Distribution Light

Set the number of duplicates you want for each layer and then set the distribution area.

Then just go for it. It may take a few moments to calculate.

Now, you could also lower you’re overhead a lot by creating a white solid and then using the CC starburst effect (CyCore FX are Also a seperate installer on the AE 6.5 CD, but are again free), to create a starfield. And then you could just ad a few twinkling stars in there. Either in 3D or 2D. Just use the epression to make them wink randomly.

Finally, take that whole comp and nest it into another comp and add a glow to the whole thing.

—————————————-
Aharon Rabinowitz
aharon(AT)yahoo(DOT)com
http://www.allbetsareoff.com
—————————————-
Creative Cow Master Series DVD
particleIllusion Fusion Volume 1
available @ http://www.pIllusionFusion.com

[Moog Gravett]

Hi Aharon,

thanks for a)your help here and b)your awesome tutorials – to my mind easily the funniest and best presented vid tuts up here (no offense to anyone else)

I’ve already been exploring the CC starburst route today, but somehow it wasn’t looking how i wanted it too, but I got a little extra foot for my thought sandwich right there. Ta.

I’ve got I.T. digging around for install disks to see if I can get hold of the Cubic Distribution doo-dad…

maybe I should just buy a strip of sequins and a really bright light 😉

thanks again for the help ..

Moog

[Aharon Rabinowitz]

Thatls what we’re here for.

You might want to try adding that glow to the starburst thing, and maybe adding 2 fast blurs to them as well – one horizontal and one vertical to give the star burst stars some “points”

—————————————-
Aharon Rabinowitz
aharon(AT)yahoo(DOT)com
http://www.allbetsareoff.com
—————————————-
Creative Cow Master Series DVD
particleIllusion Fusion Volume 1
available @ http://www.pIllusionFusion.com