Falling particles to reveal text

[Walter Soyka]

[John Madison] “I want particles to fall in z-space (so bigger near camera) until they hit a floor. The falling particles will slowly reveal a text layer. How do i tell particular to drop the particles in such a way?”

I’d set up a grid emitter and turn on gravity. Set up a floor and optionally tweak the bounce.

Create a camera in your comp, then swing it up above the particle system and point it back down at the floor. Make sure Particular is set to “use comp camera.”

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
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[Hannes Paulsson]

A simple way to reveal your text would be to set your text layer (possibly precomped, not sure how particular handles text-layers) into your floor layer.

[John Madison]

Walter,

I cant for the life of me rig the camera in the way you suggested. Help please!

[Walter Soyka]

Sorry I missed this before. If you’re still stuck, it’s a lot easier to control the camera by creating a null object, promoting the null to 3D, and parenting the camera to the null.

Now you can animated the nulls position and rotation, and the camera will follow.

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