Are photorealistic particle effects possible in Motion?

[Sandeep Sajeev]

Gareth,

You’re right, my sentence on whether the example was photorealistic or not, as phrased, was pretty pointless.

I don’t know your skill level with Motion, but in case you’re new to it, here’s what I’d suggest to get started.

– Draw a small perfectly round circle on the canvas.
– make that into a Particle.
– select the Emitter in the Layers Palette/Timeline.
– go into the Emitter tab in the Inspector.
– Choose an Emission type.
– zero out all settings except for Birth and Initial number.
– Under Cell Control, from the Color drop down, choose Colorize over life.
– Pick a Color for the start and one for the end. Also click above the end Color swatch to add a black swatch – this defines the opacity at the end of each Particle’s life. Adjust to taste – if you want them fully opaque at birth and completely out at death, then you’ll have a white swatch above the start Color and a black swatch above the end Color. You can customise these and add more swatches for a custom progression as well.

– With this set, you can adjust the speed slider to see your particles move. Change the emitter type to see how the different emitters respond, all your settings will stay the same so you can see the differences clearly.

So that should get you started with Particles.

Now to get the referenced look this is how I’d approach it.

– I’d draw a small circle on the canvas, make it a particle, set my emitter to Circle and choose Random fill (this is pretty much the same as Simon’s base).

– then I’d crank up the life, life randomness, scale, scale randomness, spin, spin randomness settings as well. I’d set the speed to be a slow number, and add some variance using the slider below.

– I’d choose Colorize over life, choose 2 different Colors, and adjust opacity over life from an off white at the start to a dark grey/elevated blacks at the end.

Then I would slip the layer/adjust the play range so I didn’t get the initial emission and come in once there are a good number of particles on the screen.

This would be my foreground particle layer. I would then duplicate this a few times, making adjustments to scale on some layers, so I have smaller particles as well, and tweak the Color over life values for the different layers. I would also modify the other sliders I mentioned a couple of points up slightly. Just to add some variance to the comp.

– Then I would turn all these groups into 3D Groups by clicking the checkbox under Group in the Inspector. I would then add a new Camera, turn on 3D Overlays from the View drop down in the canvas, and go into Top View (from the drop down in the Upper left corner of the canvas)

Here I would stagger the groups in 3D space so I have actual depth between my foreground/mid ground and background particles.

I would then add a Point/Spotlight to the scene and adjust it’s settings until I got a nice shimmery look in the areas I wanted. I would add more lights targeting specific areas if necessary. I might even animate the lights a bit.

For the various Particle Groups, I would also check the Face Camera/Look At checkbox (I’m not sure what it’s called exactly, it’s one of those 2 terms, I’m not sure which one is Motion’s and which one is Smoke’s). Not on all, just on some.

I would also add a Gravity behaviour to a couple of layers and tweak until I got something organic, and a Repel behaviour to a couple of others and again tweak until I got something nice and understated.

Then I would select my Camera, turn on Automatic Recording and animate a camera move. I would adjust the Near Plane/Far Plane settings and Depth of field to get the selective focus I wanted.

I’d probably also add a Light Rays filter to a Particle Group or two and turn it on (low values so it doesn’t look like Rays) and off as my camera moved through/around the particles. I’d go for subtlety though, just to get some specularity and some diffusion on some of the particles.

Then I’d cycle through the Blend Modes, go into the Camera Editor and adjust the animation curves, tweak the gravity/repel behaviours until I got exactly what I wanted. Remember that all your Emitter settings like scale, life, spin etc can also be keyframed throughout.

Add some global Color correction right at the top, drop in a hint of film grain and you should have something very nice indeed.

Hope that helps get you going.

Best,
Sandeep.

[Sandeep Sajeev]

Also, like Simon says, turn on Additive Blend, it makes a significant difference.

[Sandeep Sajeev]

I had to create filler for an iPhone in the background of a shot last week – with about 20 minutes left in the online, the client decided she wanted something else on the phone screen. So I popped into Motion and made this in about 5 minutes:

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Specularity in Apple Motion from sandeep sajeev on Vimeo.

This was exported out as ProRes HQ for final comping in Smoke, so blur/grain etc hasn’t been added. But I thought it might be helpful to show how specularity can be faked in Motion.

The basic set up is a mixture of Additive Blend, 3D lighting (Spots) and the Edges filter. All the layering etc in 3D space I mentioned in my post above was used as well, but it,s not as obvious in this example as the particles are larger and constantly deforming.

I started off by drawing a curved Bezier Path, without a Fill. Then I changed the Shape Type from Solid to Airbrush. This makes a nice fuzzy shape along the Path. Then I extended the Spacing, to break the shape down into Dabs, and crisscrossed the two swatches to basically invert the inside/outside of the stroke.

This then became my base particle emitter. I then added Vortex, Repel to a few duplicates to create the flow/overflow of the molecules.

It’s all a bit lo-res, but that’s only because it wasn’t prominent at all in the scene, and needed to be knocked out quickly. It would have taken me a LOT longer to do something similar in Smoke and I would never have been able to get the organic molecular flow that using behaviours gave me. The UI stuff is also straight from the motion library, just thrown into the comp, scaled, CC’d and half toned. Just super fast and all playback was real-time!

With a bit more time and care, it could have been a lot better. So, anyway, that’s my specularity trick inside Motion.

Sandeep.

[Simon Ubsdell]

Hi Sandeep

That’s just a brilliant effect and your clear and simple description made it easy to recreate in a couple of minutes.

Such a great example of what you can do with clever compositing. Love the use of the edge filter to get that look! Extremely specular!

Simon Ubsdell
http://www.tokyo-uk.com

[Simon Ubsdell]

Of course another way to get a specular look for your particles is to use the Indent filter which can product some pretty amazingly photorealistic results with quite a bit of user control over the “lighting”.

Simon Ubsdell
http://www.tokyo-uk.com

[Sandeep Sajeev]

Yep, it gives you a softer look with lots more highlight control.

So many ways to do something, but there’s no waiting around for stuff to render!

[Simon Ubsdell]

I also found that a minute amount of Dazzle (the least possible so as not to see the “star” effect) plus Glow gives a very natural looking shimmer effect. The Dazzle accentuates any changes in luminance in the particles and the Glow softens the resulting sparkles and makes them more “believable”.

I think as you have shown, a lot of getting a great result depends on compositing trickery – of course you need to get your basic particles looking good but it’s the extra treatment that you add which makes all the difference.

Simon Ubsdell
http://www.tokyo-uk.com

[Sandeep Sajeev]

Simon,

off topic – you’re using a pen to drive Motion right? Have you been able to wrap your head around the insanity of the hand/brain work required to use Gestures?

I’m looking at the documentation now, and it seems ridiculous to me. Are you using them and/or do you know anyone who is?

[Simon Ubsdell]

[Sandeep Sajeev] “off topic – you’re using a pen to drive Motion right? Have you been able to wrap your head around the insanity of the hand/brain work required to use Gestures?

I’m looking at the documentation now, and it seems ridiculous to me. Are you using them and/or do you know anyone who is?”

I’m afraid I’ve found it very hard to get friendly with Gestures – as you say it’s a lot of rewiring of the brain and hands to get used to it, and I can’t persuade myself that it a more efficient way of doing anything.

In the manual it says: “Note: The Paste command may be a bit tricky to master”. In fact they’re all tricky to master, and the Paste command is virtually impossible.

Simon Ubsdell
http://www.tokyo-uk.com

[Gareth Randall]

[Simon Ubsdell] “Sorry, didn’t mean to offend you”

I wasn’t really offended, but I did think “Aww, c’mon!” – many of us are here to learn, after all 😉