[Johan Tornlund]

Hello Tom,

When I was around 8 years old, I found a free version of Bryce 3D on a computer magazine CD. I had never had any form of 3D experience prior to that except being very fascinated by CGI movies from video games. Fortunately Bryce was so user-friendly and fun to learn that I was up and running, making majestic 3D vistas and landscapes within minutes. Ever since then, I’ve been hooked on 3D modeling and animation.
I have also used the Far Cry editor you mentioned and I remember, when I first tried it I was immediately reminded of the old days of landscape sculpting in Bryce. I think for someone who’s young and coming from the Far Cry editor, Bryce is the perfect choice for an introduction into 3D modeling.

I hope this will help you and your son!

– Johan

[Johan Tornlund]

You can also duplicate and delay the stroke layer by 1 frame and then use track matte to only reveal the tip of the stroke.

To apply a trail to the stroke, I would first motion track the tip of the stroke and then apply the motion to a light layer.
Finally set Trapcode Particular to emit particles from the light layer to get the trail.

[Johan Tornlund]

I think he used particular for most of those glitter scenes.
I would suggest playing around with the “Opacity over life” settings during the slow-motion glitter.
When you want it to just randomly appear at a fast pace, drastically lower the particle/sec count.

[Johan Tornlund]

Dan, thank you for trying to help me with this.
I realize now however that I forgot to mention a crucial part of my problem.
What I really need is an expression that will duplicate a layer so I won’t have to do it manually.
To be more precise, it is exactly what was mentioned in this thread:
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/227/9041

Your answer to that thead was that it isn’t possible unless one were to use the shape repeater. Luckily in my case all of the layers I want to duplicate are in fact shapes. The only problem left is to make them randomly appear across the screen.
I can think of it as several shapes swooping by sideways that leave duplicates as a trail. And on top of that, each one of those shapes have a wiggle applied which affects their velocity.

Wow that sounds really confusing, and I’m starting to question if the amount of work required is worth such a small effect. I might just resort to using your first expression instead, since it basically did the trick only without the random velocity. But either way, thank you for your time.

[Johan Tornlund]

Thanks but I think I wasn’t specific enough in my post. The solution you provided is exactly what I meant with the precomp that acts as a mask. And yes it works very well, but not so much in the long run. Since I need to do this for a lot of different footage, I’d very much like it if there was an automated way instead, like simply saving and loading a preset. But presets don’t include Comps if I’m not mistaken, so I’m not sure how I would do this.