dust particles

[Mike Clasby]

If you have some money to invest, the most used Particle generators are Trapcode’s Particular (works in AE), and Particle Illusion (standalone, but SE version is 30 days no limits trial).

You might also look at Dan Ebbert’s expression driven tut, “Building a 3D Particle Generator”, click his head at the top of the page and scroll down to the tut. Download the project files, and in the comp “Combo Explosion” you can turn off the eye ball for the layer (precomp) “twinkle explosion”, leaving on smoke and debris. You can sub in your own particles, 128×128 images with transparency, see Dan’s examples. Dan’s tut is good because his particles have explosive speed, and are immanently tweakable (read his tut, change the numbers for things like:

vmin=700; //minimum initial velocity
vmax=1000; //maximum initial velocity

You can also make particles out of almost anything (not slick like Particular) with Stylize>Scatter or Simulation>CC Scatterize. You can also use Simulation>CC Ball Action and Scatterize in combo.

For fast and dirty, you might try that first, duplicate your text layer (Ctrl D) and change the color of your text to the color of the concrete, then
Simulation>CC Ball Action
Grid Spacing to 0 (you might have to right click on the blue 5, (default number) and Edit Value to get the Grid Spacing Dialogue box, then change the min to 0.
Ball Size: to taste
Scatter: Animate this with keyframes to get your initial dust explosion.

Scatter or CC Scatterize: Crank up the amount to make the particles fine.

There are also some CC Particle Generators in AE, but I’m not the one to ask about them.

[Mylenium]

Also do not forget about fractal Noise. When used in combination with displacement effects, you may be able to bend and twist it just like you need. CC Sphere and CC Cylinder may even allow you to create impact bubbles/ shockwaves. Then it’s just a matter of animating Offset and Evolution parameters in the Fractal Noise to get some motion.

Mylenium

[Pour Myl

[Chris Smith]

I did almost the exact thing you describe. Like Mylenium suggested, I played with Fractal noise first, but ultimately what looked the most realistic was one of the presets in Combustion(Particle illusion) like Yikes suggested. Just thought I’d share.

Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com