I don't know much, but do you think this was done in AE? I'd like to create a similar effect, but don't know squat about AE, tho I do have a copy provided by those I work for.
i don't know how the particle system works in AE but it looks like just particles following an oval path with a little bit of random translation perpendicular to the path...
Yes, but those are not even particles. All that is there is a circular mask on a solid, with either the stroke, or vegas effect applied to it, and then they duplicated and offset the layers in 3d space while animating either the effect attributes, or animating the rotation of the solids. Super quick, super easy. And best of all, faster than a particle system.