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  • Particle Effect Question

    Posted by Chadwick Chennault on May 27, 2009 at 7:24 pm

    I would like to create a particle effect where a subject runs across screen leaving a trail of particles. The subject will then collide with another object at which time the trail of particles will “explode” such that the individual particles in the trail will be scattered randomly.

    Has anyone seen a tutorial similar to the concept described above? If not, can anyone offer some suggestions as to how to accomplish this?

    I typically create particle effects with Particular, but I am open to using a different package… or even C4D.

    Thanks!

    Chadwick Chennault replied 16 years, 11 months ago 3 Members · 3 Replies
  • 3 Replies
  • Stuart Elith

    May 28, 2009 at 1:27 am

    I don’t have a tutorial for you, but this should be very achievable in Particular. I have done something vaguely similar.

    It will be to do with either wind, turbulence or spin for the particles. If you, at the point where you want them to freak out, quickly keyframe one of those values to a high number, it will affect existing particles and therefore spray them around. Might depend on the existing settings such as velocity, not sure, but with some tweaking it’s definitely possible. I am not sure if all of those attributes will affect existing particles but I think they might. At least one of them does… I had a thing with a stream of particles which i had essentially “frozen” with no velocity or movement, then made them burst out at a point.

  • Michael Szalapski

    May 28, 2009 at 1:48 pm

    I’m not a blazing expert on Particular and I’m not in front of my AE machine at the moment, but here’s a thought:
    In case your particle application doesn’t have the ability to affect existing particles, what you could do is precompose your particle effect and time remap it in your main comp.

    Also, if you don’t already have it, Wondertouch’s ParticleIllusion does have the ability to suddenly bring in a “force” that acts on existing particles. In fact, you can bring in a bunch of different forces at different velocities, sizes, and directions.

    – The Great Szalam
    (The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

    No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

  • Chadwick Chennault

    June 1, 2009 at 2:51 pm

    Okay. Figured it out. I was able to achieve the desired effect by keyframing the “spin” feature under “Physics” in Particular.”

    Thanks!

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