[Cassius Marques]

My code is wrong (not that you actually needed it). It should be “>” for the if check

[Cassius Marques]

[Tim Parsons] “And I don’t want to hold the last negative keyframe because there’s more movement after it. The track would get thrown off.”

Sure, I understand this is not a real solution. But you said every single frame is keyframed so this would not break the track just the motion blur for that frame (Since AE won’t be able to interpolate). Anyway go ahead with the first option.

a=transform.zRotation;
(a <0?a:a+360);

[Cassius Marques]

you shouldn’t set the value to just positive, you’ll have to add 360 to it. -179 would be 181. That’s why they shift. I goes to negative because its a matter of the orientation conversion (imho).

You can also just try to set the last of the negative keyframe to hold. Thus breaking the oddly motion blur on that frame, though you would also probably lose the smooth motion blur there.

[Cassius Marques]

Seeing the higher res video I can tell you more how I would reproduce that.
The author had a water drop animation, probably done within a 3d software, the white reflection on the botton probably comes from a forest with a sky backplate(once you have a refracted material in a spheared shape, things get inverted, you’re seeing the sky’s reflection). With a few noise effectors you would get 90% of the particle done. Bringing it to AE and color correcting would get you the rest.

You can duplicate this particle source and hand animate a flare coming in and out (in one of them) or some sparking glints by duplicating the particles, adding glow and working with blending modes. To get more randomness you need to create extra sources. Use more instances of particular (one with each as source).

Or put all of them in the same composition(sequenced) and set it to “split clip – play once”.

Other then that, there’s some Red Giant starglow. Camera blur (or a simple blur to the background particles). And some flare to the left with a rainbow lens effect and some bokeh.

[Cassius Marques]

add a light? and use the shading mode?

[Cassius Marques]

From a 240p video it’s kind hard to pin point the look. I can’t see what the particles really are, its all blurry. But I’ll try to help anyway.

I’d suggest you break apart the particle layer to more instances, Create a base particle that will be shown allways and make another particle layer with a simple flare popping in on top of that. The key is to use the opacity on this second particular instance to drive when the flares appear and they don’t all shine like crazy.

Another way would be to use VCP’s optical flare in lightness mode (in a precomp with just some particles). Little controll this way but a few times it does wonders.

Also keep in mind that if some setting in particular is holding you back, the foreground particles could be hand placed and animated there. (once you have the camera solved)

[Cassius Marques]

is the catcher also with motion blur on? try to move it a few units forward. may be some clipping due to the movement (or put an adjustment layer right below the catcher).

[Cassius Marques]

Without seeing anything it’s hard to guess. From the description you seemed to have everything checked. Maybe try a point light other than a spot (if you aren’t already), another light source angle.

Can you post a SS?

[Cassius Marques]

You should really go for the author and ask for help. It seems simple enough. Sharing the project with anyone else would probably be against it’s licensing terms.

[Cassius Marques]

That’s nice, never thought anything else would be able to read .aep but Adobe’s own software.
Please share a link to that game when ready guys! Good luck.