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AFX: How to restrain particles INSIDE a shape ??
Hi!
i want to animate a stylized 2d-shape of a sandclock in after effects. The sand will be animated with trapcode particular. Now i was wondering if its possible to restrain all the particles inside that sandclock shape..in order to let the particles bounce of the shape walls etc. that would look by far more realistic then just adding a simple mask. any idea how to do this ?
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6 Replies
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My basic knowledge of AE and Particular says — YES – -WOOP WOOP.
Create your particles (size I suspect to be ‘very’ small.
You will need to create a crude ‘closed’ imaged of your hourglass using multiple 3D layers (All rotated to be end on….)Using the ‘bounce’ facility (I think its in physics) to will need to define you ‘floor / walls’
Increase your life, so to retain the structure . .
Only question I have, is whether the particles will ‘pile’ or just overlap – must be a way round that – will need to think.
And when I get home from work, PLAY…..
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Particular lets you define a wall and a floor for Bounce physics, but even with these, you won’t have the ability to pile up particles like in an hourglass.
This might be better handled with a 3D application (like Cinema 4D or Blender) with a particle system and dynamics.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
Two particle systems/generators – one for the sand that falls down, one for the sand that piles up…? Could be interesting.
Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist -
A 3d program will get you much more what you want, but if it must be AE, you could try using Foam. You can use a precomp as a flow map to guide the particles and they will react to each other somewhat. You’ll have to play with the settings so that they don’t kill each other when they hit. (The initial settings are more for bubbles or…FOAM as you might expect.)
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This tutorial may help also. You could use this technique to shape the particle flow.
Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist -
[Tudor "Ted" Jelescu] “You could use this technique to shape the particle flow.”
Good call!
You could also use a couple instances of Particular and shape the particle flow with Particular’s Air > Motion Path feature (which would let you avoid any distortion the Puppet tool would introduce).
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events
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