Lingering Particles

[Paul Conigliaro]

I would play with CC Particle World, which responds to camera movements. Use faded spheres for the particle type, up the XYZ radius, gravity to 0, resistance up a bit. Change animation to Twirly. Just play with it. You’ll find something you’ll like.

Just have the life of the particles long (30 seconds or however long your comp is plus a few more), and have a high birth rate for a few seconds, then set it to 0. If you shift your layer so these keyframes are before the comp starts, you have particles that just exist and will linger for a while.

[David Bogie]

also suggest you stop by the Cycore site and download the Particle World tutorials. Very difficult to get your head around this stuff and I can’t really tell from the post what you’re after.

PW has tons of hidden properties and settings. For instance, you can get to a floor property that is accessible form the OPTIONS. You can set it to be sticky, bouncy, or to behave like ice.
And, known to but a few, you can set z-space positions for the emitter to make it go behind the layer to which you are applying the effect/ That is, if you have a logo on an alpha, you can apply PW to it and have the emitter trace a spiral in front of and behind the layer. Aitn’ easy nor direct but it can be done.

Anyway, using the Ice or Glue Floor options you can have a spray of particles come toward the camera and stay put.

Gotcha: You cannot apply PW twice to the same layer. Only one will show up.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”