How To Make a Shooting Star, Comet, or Meteor Shower in Adobe After Effects

Creating shooting stars, comets, or even full meteor showers in Adobe After Effects is simple, and you don’t need any third-party plugins! In this tutorial, we’ll use the CC Particle World effect to create a meteor streaking across the sky. Follow along to make your own basic shooting star, and at the end, check out the full tutorial for creating a realistic meteor shower burning up in the atmosphere—similar to the exploding SpaceX Starship debris in January 2025.

This realistic meteor shower is made entirely in After Effects, without plugins.

Step 1: Create a Solid Layer

1. Open After Effects and create a New Composition (1920x1080, 30fps, 10 seconds long).

2. Go to Layer > New > Solid, name it Comet, and make it black.

3. With the solid selected, go to Effects > Simulation > CC Particle World to apply the effect.

   
   

   

   Add a CC Particle World effect to a Solid layer.

Step 2: Animate the Position

To make the shooting star move across the frame:

1. Expand the Producer settings of the CC Particle World effect in the Effect Controls Panel.

2. Move to the start of the timeline and position the X, Y, and Z values where you want the meteor to begin.

3. Click the stopwatch icon next to the position values to add keyframes on the first frame.

4. Move forward a couple of seconds and adjust the position so the meteor moves across the screen.

   
   

Step 3: Adjust Particle Behavior

Now, we’ll fine-tune the effect to resemble a shooting star:

1. Set Gravity to 0 – This prevents the particles from falling downward.

2. Reduce Velocity to 0.1 – This keeps the particles close to the original streak, reducing the width of the tail.

3. Set Radius to 0.005 – This makes the emitter very small, reducing the size of the meteor's head.

4. Increase Resistance to 3 – This slows down the particles for a more natural motion, and also affects the tail width.

5. Set Inherit Velocity to 30% – This makes the particles in the tail move with the head, creating some motion blur.

   
   

   

   Draw a new curve to make the head of the comet brighter, and the tail dimmer and fading out.

Step 4: Adjust Particle Appearance

1. Change the Birth Color to White – This makes the meteor's head bright and visible.

2. Modify the Opacity Map:

   • Expand the Opacity Map property to reveal the waveform/curve.

   • Draw a curve with your mouse that starts high, dips dramatically in the beginning, and then gradually slopes down to 0. This simulates a natural fading tail.

   
   

   

   A couple Glow effects will make the head glow bright. Or, for a useful glow alternative that is much bigger and brighter than the standard Glow effect, download the 100% free preset, AfterGlow, from the Creation Effects Freebies page.

Step 5: Add Glow Effects

1. Go to Effects > Stylize > Glow and apply it to the solid layer.

2. Increase the Threshold to 100%. 

3. Increase the Glow Radius to about 30, and increase the Glow Intensity to enhance the brightness.

4. (Optional) Add a second Glow effect for more intensity.

   
   

Now, you have a simple shooting star! If you want to go further and create a realistic meteor shower burning up in the atmosphere, check out the full tutorial below, available for free from CreationEffects.com.

Learn how to make more detailed and realistic meteors in this free After Effects tutorial.

This effect was first created for the Space Effects template for After Effects. Space Effects is a huge collection of custom FX for making a variety of space animations, like black holes, galaxies, nebulae, the earth, sun, and planets. Watch the demo video below!

Create custom animations of other space-related effects with the Space Effects template from Creation Effects.