[Lifetypo]

hey i got psnumai as well and i have to say it is the biggest resource hog plug in i ever used i mean to render out 5 seconds of a ocean took me well over a hour i was baffled .. but other then that , if i was you id use particles for the rain drops trapcode people website has a file for download with some good rain with drops hitting a colliosion point and breaking up . id start thier for the rain . the sky you could use fractal noise that should do the trick . or just take video of sky and put it in 3d space and move it above the ocean kinda flattend out .
the easiest way to do lighnting is make a adjument layer . mask it on the sky and lil over the water and then keyframe the bright5ness to jump for one frame or so . u could also throw in the cc lighting effect in ae i think its cc not sure but its in thier somewhere

[Lifetypo]

you can make it so its not broken up lines . but one big line around the sign and then another inside the sign .. works perfectly done4 something simliar of course with lots of lil tweaks

[Lifetypo]

try the plugin that comes with ae .. vegas . you can create neon flashing signs etc.. i think that would be the easiest way to make it happen .. maybe not the best but def easy and real fast

[Lifetypo]

hit ctrl shift and alt .. while holding them all down go to edit/ prefrences /general . after that go down to this secret menu at the bottom of the menu of prefrences says secret … turn your cache’n down to clear cache every 25 frames or so .. i have mine set to clear ever 10 frames .. it takes a lil bit longer but it will get the job done and wont max out ya
computers ram chace good luck

[Lifetypo]

without a doubt .. andrew kramers http://www.videocopilot.net free video tutorials .. and of course all the video tutorials on creative cow .. if you cant learn the basic and intermediate stuff from those 2 sources .. then i dont know what to tell ya .

http://WWW.VIDEOCOPILOT.NET
http://www.Creativecow.net
trapcode people site
many more .. but the best place is here creative cow video tuts and video co pilot ..

[Lifetypo]

glue gun , mercury . mess around with those 2 and you should be able to create what you want . i made something very simliar using the two . more of a rain drop then a tear but same thing

[Lifetypo]

whats up malcolm i like your video . what effect did you use to create those fire fly white dot type things ..

[Lifetypo]

https://www.videocopilot.net/videotutorials/old_film-look/index.html

andrews old film effect .. one of his first tuts

[Lifetypo]

okay i felt kinda dumb asking this question .. but the fit to comp option wasnt doing the trick the stuff was out of place .. but i resized the video and picture named as sometyhing else then did a file replacement with the smaller size . and resized comp to the size the newly sized footage was .. and scaled the cameras keypoints a lil bit and it works fine now and will export without any errors

[Lifetypo]

thanks for your help im messing around with these settings and the 2 options you suggested hopefully get this comp mixed down .. thx