Sunbursts or radial rays in After Effects

... is a new updated roundup at ProVideo Coalition. There are a variety of ways to make a sunburst effect or radial rays in After Effects.

Sunburst or radial rays in After Effects

Update: See the newly updated roundup at ProVideo Coalition, Sunburst effect or radial rays in After Effects.

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AEtuts+ has a free project for Premium users by Tibor Miklos that contains 17 animations of a sunburst, aka radial rays.

Also, Brent Pierce notes The rise of the Sunburst! and some Photoshop brushes, Sunburst Brushes 2.0 by ~CreativeLiberties.

Easy radial rays in After Effects

Shortformvideo shows you another method to create Radial rays in his recent After Effect tutorial video (embedded below). He says he used to use a "complex method to create radial rays (grid+polar coordinates), but there’s actually a much easier way to do it!"

There are several other methods outlined in other AEP posts tagged radial ray.

After Effects Expressions / Illusions

Stephen daimyo2k has a 6-part After Effects tutorial, Expressions / Illusions, on Youtube that many among other things creates a simple optical illusion without keyframes from a radial ray element created with the Polar Coordinates filter. In a cruder manner, you could instead use the Venetian Blinds transition to get some stripes, compify, and then use Polar Coordinates.

Related tutorials (mostly using Shape layers) can be found under the tag radial ray.

Here's part 6 (via):

Radial ray Shape to psychedelic background +

Aharon Rabinowitz builds on the initial version of Todd Kopriva's Radial ray Shape project in After Effects in Red Giant TV Ep. 36: Create a Psychedelic Background. A 3rd party filter (or a dancer) isn't really required here; you could easily just use the hobbled-by-comparison CC Light Burst instead of Shine.

Update: Stephen daimyo2k makes a simple optical illusion without keyframes from a radial ray element created with the Polar Coordinates filter.

Radial ray Shape projects

Todd Kopriva answers a question on how to make radial rays in After Effects with an easily tweakable project and oblique pointers on how you make one on your own.

It's reminiscent of a recent video tutorial from Precomposed, Vector Sunburst. This tutorial (pictured right) includes a download of some Photoshop shapes and shows you how to construct a Photoshop Shape and use it in an AE Shape layer. You might miss the animation controls available to AE Shape layers as seen in Todd's example, but both should have better edges than a similar effect produced in Premiere with the Pinwheel transition.

For background on Shape layers, see Shape Layers in After Effects CS3 by Total Training host Steve Holmes at Layers magazine. Motionworks has a tutorial movie also, Mask to Shape Layer, Aharon Rabinowitz added a podacst An Introduction to Shape Layers, and Chris & Trish added The Shape of Things to Come: Shape Layers Introduction.

Update: Todd added another method (inspired by an Illustrator tutorial) on his blog, "Make a shape layer containing a single big circle. Set the stroke width to be the same as the diameter of the circle. Make the stroke a dashed stroke. Set the dash length to taste."