Want to create fireworks in AE 7 without a special plugin

[Mike Clasby]

Click on Dan’s head above (left coast) and scroll to my fav tut:

Building a 3D Particle Generator

You got you standard fireworks explosion, fountain (and you can parent two fountains to a bar layer, rotate it to get one of those spinning things), fireblast, goop, snowflakes (oh, you just want fireworks, oops). GREAT TUT.

Or you might checkout the trial version Particle Illusion, PL SE, I think, it was 30 days fully functional and has lots (100’s I’d guess) of fireworks presets.

https://www.wondertouch.com/index.asp

[Mike Clasby]

You can make different looking fireworks by rendering the Explosion with Physics comp (use a codec with Alpha), importing it, then add effects, like;

Time>Echo up the number of echoes to 20 or so and change Decay until you get a fade you like.

Time>CC Wide Time

Stylize>Scatter, to get small sparkly particles (very cool with Randomize every frame checked)

Simulate > CC Hair is fun

Stylize > Glow

Render>Fill, to change the color of the particles, you can even keyframe color changes.

or you could use this expression from Dan on the color Stop Watch (Alt Click it, then paste) to get random colors every half sec:

period = 0.5; // change color every .5 seconds
colors = [[1,0,0,1], // red
[0,1,0,1], // green
[0,0,1,1], // blue
[1,0,1,1], // magenta
[1,1,0,1], // yellow
[0,1,1,1]] // cyan

seed = Math.floor(time/period);
seedRandom(seed,true);
idx = Math.floor(random(colors.length));
colors[idx]

Note: You can also make your own particles, Dan uses mostly 128×128 psds. Have fun.