• Adobe After Effects

  Modify path of an emitter

  Posted by Fabrice Ducouret on February 7, 2011 at 12:33 pm

  I have a AE project that contains a smoke trail (with its effects : sparks, smoke, emitter) whose path I would like to modify to make it match smoothly the filmed image I have in the background (in and out points would change for each image of the sequence).
  How can I do this? I’m a beginner with this but the emitter path doesn’t seem to move around freely… i can’t make it show up with handles I could move around.
  Thank you !

  Fabrice Ducouret replied 15 years, 2 months ago 3 Members · 3 Replies
• 3 Replies

• 

  Tudor “ted” jelescu

  February 7, 2011 at 3:39 pm

  It depends what particle system you are using. If you are using Particular then it’s quite easy. You can set the emitter to be a light (you have to name it Emitter and select that option in Particular ) and you can benefit of all the attributes of that light including linking it to a path.

  Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
  Senior VFX Artist
• 

  Jason Mettler

  February 7, 2011 at 6:07 pm

  Ted’s method is best. If you use more than one emitter, click on options and note which light is your emitter. “Emitter 01”, “Emitter 02”, etc.
  Another way I’ve mapped paths is to use a null object. Once the null is tracking right, parent the emitter coordinates to the null Use the pickwhip for 2D. 3D requires a little more expression work but not much 😉

  Try this tutorial:

  https://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/smoke_trails/

  Good Luck!
• 

  Fabrice Ducouret

  February 14, 2011 at 6:15 pm

  Thanks for your advice! It worked really well…
  Now i would like to attach a 3D object to the emitters of these paths, which would move along and adjust in angle / perspective. Can this be done? Can i export the 3D object from photoshop, and if so how?

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