Ipod Commercial Lighting Streaksby Andy Halls, USA



In this tutorial we will create lighting streaks like you have seen in the latest commercial of Apple Ipod Nano. To accomplish the project we will you a third party plug-in called Trapcode Particular. This is a wonderful plug-in for After Effects which generates particles and help in creating various effects.

Step 1: Create a new 640 x 480 size composition for 10 seconds or more as per your requirement. Also create two new layers named Background and Particles respectively.


Step 2: Create Layer > New > Light (Ctrl + Alt + Shift + L). We used this light as an emitter for generating the particles. Also change the name of the light to "Emitter" because Trapcode particular emits particle from only those lights which named Emitter.

Step 3: Select an Emitter layer and Press P to bring the position settings of the light. Now press Alt and click on the position stopwatch so we can write an expression to move a light. Because moving a light manually is a cumbersome process. So we will apply a wiggle expression on the emitter. Please write “wiggle(.5,300)” (without quotes).


Step 4: Now your light is moving all over the composition. You can change the values in the expression as per your requirement. Select a layer named Particles and apply a trapcode particular plugin. Select the following settings as shown in the image.


Step 5: If you play the timeline then particles are not emitting as you are looking for. So we have to create a design and need to give a custom design to the particle. So select New > Composition of size 50x50 and create a design as below through masking the solid layers. I know working on such a small comp is very difficult so increase the magnification to 400%. Also reduce the opacities of these solid layers to 10-15%.


Step 6: Drag this composition in the original composition at the bottom and hide the layer by clicking the eye button because we don’t need to show in the scene.


Step 7: Go into the Particular settings again and change the following settings. Now you achieved the effect on which you are working.


Step 8: Create an adjustment layer and apply a hue and saturation effect to change the color of the effect. Apply a glow effect on this adjustment layer and increase the radius and intensity.


Final Step: Create a New camera layer and move the camera around as per your requirement. That’s it, you almost created a same Apple Ipod commercial.