[John Cuevas]

It’s probably Trapcode Shine, but if you don’t have it, you could create 2 layers of text and apply CC LightBurst to the top one and animate that to disappear.

Made a quick(and dirty) example project. 4254_lightprojection.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.

[John Cuevas]

Depending on layers, effects, cameras & motion blur 1 hour might not be out of line. For example I created some opens (10 seconds) with faux reflections, cameras, lights, particles and effects-total of around 60 layers and the average render time was 38 minutes.

On an 8gig(6.5 available) system with 4 cores at best you are only going to be using 2 cores at 2gig allocation. You might want to drop the allocation to 1gig so you can use all your cores and leave a little more for the OS.

If you are working on setting up your project, I would render at draft quality and turn on Draft 3d(doesn’t render lights, motion blur). That might save your time during your previews.

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 you don’t want to add more masks to your solid/shadow layer than I would use a track matte.

Lock all your layers to start(just for safety). Create a solid and place it above your shadow layer and turn off it’s eyeball. Now use the pen tool to choose the area you Don’t want to see the shadow. Now just change the track matte on your shadow layer to alpha inverted.

Unlock your other layers if you need want to work on them further.

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]

Aharon Rabinowitz did a tutorial using particles and the puppet tool to simulate an air flow over a car. You should be able to modify that for a shoe.

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 tried out the RepositionAnchorPoint script and it worked exactly as it should in CS6. When you install it, install both the script and the (RepositionAnchorPoint_Resources) folder into the ScriptUI Panels folder.

Again though, after you watch those tutorials, you’ll probably decide that the RepositionAnchorPoint isn’t really necessary anymore.

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 try out that script on 6.0 when I get to work, but 6.0 has anchor points that “snap” to the bounding box and center of layers by holding down control.

Check out these tutorials: After Effects CS6 – Bounding Boxes

Layer Bounding Boxes and Selection Indicators

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]

Also, is there a way (plugin?) to take a layered psd file and have ae automatically move the anchor points to centre on the contents of each layer? (Hope this makes sense)

There’s a name your price script at AEscripts that does this, RepositionAnchorPoint.

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 got it figured out and it was an (relatively) easy fix.

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]

There is a “skytype” preset that comes with particular for creating a smoke text. Apply that to a layer and it already has the word “type” written in smoke, if you press “U” you will see that it’s accomplished by using the emitter position to write the text and turning on and off the particle birth when moving to the next letters/stroke.

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]

Just realized that I didn’t mention you would create a text layer(cntl+alt+shift+t), twirl down and add that expression to the source text.

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.