[John Cuevas]

It’s a third party plugin from Video CoPilot. Very popular lens flare package. Unfortunately it isn’t available in a trial version, perhaps you can create your own lens flare or use the lens flares found under the Effect -> Generate -> Lens Flare.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Glad you figured it out. Just for future reference you can post images directly here, it’s the third icon from the end.

Cheers.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Most likely, you cpu and video card are unable to play back an uncompressed AVI file smoothly. Check out this explanation from Todd Kopriva at Adobe.

FAQ: Why is my output file huge, and why doesn’t it play back smoothly in a media player?

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Because AE recalculates expressions on each frame a really smooth ramp up and down for wiggle is actually pretty difficult. Dan Ebberts wrote a brilliant expression though that does exactly that though, create smooth ramps up and down for wiggle.

Create a null and add 2 sliders and name them Frequency & Amplitude. Add this expression to the position property of your null and then parent the camera position to the null so that the wiggle is added to it. Just keyframe the null and you are all set:

freq = effect("Frequency")("Slider");
amp = effect("Amplitude")("Slider");

if (freq.numKeys > 0){
accum = 0;
v0 = freq.valueAtTime(0);
t0 = 0;
i = 1;
while (i <= freq.numKeys){
t = freq.key(i).time;
if (t < time){
accum += (v0 + freq.key(i).value)*(t - t0)/2;
v0 = freq.key(i).value;
t0 = t;
if (i == freq.numKeys){
accum += (time - t0)*v0;
}
}else{
accum += (freq + v0)*(time - t0)/2;
break;
}
i++;
}
}else{
accum = freq*time;
}
wiggle(1,amp,1,.5,accum);


Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Post a screen grab that shows the comp window, paragraph and character windows.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

aescripts has a script that looks like it will do what you need for $99.00.

AE Project Sync

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

If it’s not too much trouble, can you post the project here and I’ll take a look at it and see if I notice anything you missed.

Don’t need anything in the project except the particular layer and the precomps with the sprite layers, just so that it’s set up the same.(don’t need the balloons assets.)

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

I’ll ask the simple question. Under the emitter settings, did you set the “Velocity Random[%] to 0?

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Under visibility, you would use the obscuration layer pulldown. Check out this tutorial.
Red Giant QuickTip #49: Trapcode Particular and Obscuration Layers

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Unlike Particular you can’t set obscuration layers with 3D stroke, you have to accomplish it using the Z Clip Front and Z Clip Back.

So to get 3D stroke to wrap around 1 object, after you created your stroke animation, you would duplicate the stroke layer. One layer would be the “Back Layer”, it would be placed below your object in the layer stack and you would use the “Z clip front” to cut off the stroke when it would be in front of the object.

The “Front Layer” would be placed above the object in the layer stack and you would use the “Z Clip Back” and set that number to cut the stroke off when it’s behind the object.

These 2 numbers should be the same, so that these 2 strokes will look like one stroke when you are finished.

I have uploaded a VERY simple project illustrating this technique: 4306_3dstroke.aep.zip

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.