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Particles – How To Use A Mask as an Emitter
So I’m doing an animation for this bank. I have a white solid with a mask that forms the shape of a lock. The mask animates from the lock being open to shut, and to emphasize it closing I want some particles to spray out of it briefly.
What is the easiest/best way to have particles fly directly out of the lock shape? I have struggled with this before and always just end up doing some compromise with a regular emitter.
I have Particular and was fiddling with the Layer Emitter settings but it’s not recognizing the mask. Is it a pre-comping issue?
Any help is much appreciated!
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2 Replies
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You want to tell Particular to emit from a layer — in your case your masked lock that has been precomped:
This is from the help manual that you can find by going into particular effects window/ click on “options” then click on “help” at the bottom of the options window:
In Particular, set Emitter>Layer to your precomped “lock” layer. Notice that a new light named “LayerEmit [layername]” is created. This is a control light that Particular uses to keep track of the layer. It is locked and shy and it’s not supposed to be edited.
Set Emitter>Emitter Size Z to 0 (zero).
Try a RAM preview to see particles emitted from the text. Notice that all particles are behind the layer. To fix this, move the Boom layer to the bottom of the TLW. Then set in Particular Visibility>Also Obscure with to “Layer Emitter”.
Jim Dodson
8 Core Intel — Mac – OSX
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yeah I don’t know what that’s doing but its definitely not working. It’s probly because I already animated the 3-D layer, then precomped it, then collapsed the transitions and then made it 3-D again. Bummer.
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