• Adobe After Effects

  Particular – Motion Path (not following light)

  Posted by Greg Radcliffe on July 30, 2009 at 9:17 pm

  I am trying to have a particle system follow a 3D Stroke. I order to control the particle tail I was going to use the Motion Path function under the Air pulldown. I created a spot light named Motion Path 1 and selected 1 in the Motion path pulldown menu. One question, does it matter if the light is above or below the particular layer? I guessing below since I don’t get an error message when it is, any one confirm that for me?

  It doesn’t seem to be working. I don’t see a difference between having a motion path and not. Is there a video online showing the AE workspace of this working? I can’t find much help on this other than the official manual. Turning the Motion Path to HQ doesn’t change anything.

  I have my emitter as a light that I keyframed to follow the 3D stroke, in case that affects anything. I’m using Particular 1.5 btw.

  https://www.trapcode.com/help/particular/index_newin15.html

  Anthony Sherritt replied 11 years, 4 months ago 4 Members · 4 Replies
• 4 Replies

• 

  Adolfo Rozenfeld

  July 31, 2009 at 12:29 am

  It doesn’t matter if the light is above or below.
  There are two tricky aspects.
  You have to the beginning of the light animation, and make sure you enter the XYZ position values for the light in the XY and Z position values of the emitter.
  You also want to set particle speed to nothing or very low values. Otherwise the particles will fly away from the motion path too quickly, and you’ll hardly notice it.

  Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe
• 

  Aza Allen

  September 9, 2014 at 11:17 pm

  I am having the same issue…
  I create a point light and name it Motion Path 1 and keyframe it’s movement,

  I create a solid and put Particular on it, and then go to the Physics>Air and set motion path to 1, but NOTHING happens… does anyone know why, the answer above was no help at all…

  BTW – I followed this tutorial here: https://vimeo.com/17376842

  and still nothing!

  Thanks all!
  Aza

  My portfolio can be seen at http://www.ruesterprod.com
  My personal website is http://www.azaallen.com

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• 

  Anthony Sherritt

  January 6, 2015 at 7:42 pm

  I am also having the same issue. Followed same tutorial. Any luck?
• 

  Anthony Sherritt

  January 6, 2015 at 7:55 pm

  Ok, so the gotcha I ran into was the particle life being too short to see that it was indeed following the path.

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