using masks w/ feather is probably your easiest bet, as you have control over it. However you'll need more layers and masks to make it really convincing.
the bonus to using masks would be that they are really fast. If you use a Gauss blur, and your scene is really complex, you are going to need to wait for rendering the layer per frame, until it is cached.
Although plugins can be a 'crutch,' using starglow greatly increased my workflow and speed, and creates some additional liveliness to your videos.
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if you're really hardcore, check out some plugins:
http://www.trapcode.com/products_shine.html (widely and heavilly overused)
http://www.trapcode.com/products_starglow.html (can get some awesome effects with this)
using masks w/ feather is probably your easiest bet, as you have control over it. However you'll need more layers and masks to make it really convincing.
the bonus to using masks would be that they are really fast. If you use a Gauss blur, and your scene is really complex, you are going to need to wait for rendering the layer per frame, until it is cached.
Although plugins can be a 'crutch,' using starglow greatly increased my workflow and speed, and creates some additional liveliness to your videos.