Emitting particles from a Form shape using Particular…

[John Cuevas]

You would have to precompose the layer with form.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[Peter Klavins]

I tried that, moving the form settings to a precomposed comp, and after making the precomposed layer 3D it still won’t emit anything as far as I can see…

[Peter Klavins]

Sorry… edit to my last post; it worked now, but the particles aren’t responding to the movements of the form layer. The form shape is moving from fractal noise, and what I’d want is the Particular particles to be ‘thrown off’ this shape as it moves, whereas now it’s just a static field of particles being produced over the space occupied by the shape, if that makes sense…

[John Cuevas]

Particular & Form won’t work together like that as you probably have discovered. While they both can use and interact in AE’s 3d space, they are both 2d effects and they don’t have the ability to measure the distance a flowing form shape is from the camera, or what direction it is flowing. All Particular will see is a white alpha channel that indicates it should put particles at that location, it can not discern which way the particles should be moving based on the movements of another layer.

This is something you might be able to accomplish in a 3D modelling application like C4D, but not truly in AE.

Perhaps you could fake it with multiple form layers, using the same fractal patterns. The top layer would have a lot less particles and the fractal could displace them quite far in distance.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.