Opinions on Particular or PI

[Darby Edelen]

If you mean Particle Illusion when you say PI, then I regret to inform you that it’s not a plug-in (although I’ve heard rumor that it may be some day). Particle Illusion is a stand alone application that you can use to produce very cool 2D particle systems. The downside is that you can’t adjust the particles inside of AE, you have to render out an image sequence and import it into AE. Also, while you can fake depth by scaling the particles there isn’t really any depth to a Particle Illusion particle system.

Particular is a plugin and allows you to produce particle systems inside of AE that can interact with layers, emit from lights and more. Most significantly it produces each 2D particle in 3D space, you can orbit around the particle system with an AE camera.

They are both awesome, and useful for different things. You could even use both of them in conjunction if you create an animated particle in Particle Illusion and import it into AE to use as a custom particle for Particular.

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA