Particular 2: 2 sided custom particle

[Dan Ebberts]

Unless Particular has some provision for two-sided particles (I’m guessing it must not, or you’d be using it), I don’t think it’s going to work. Any expression that you come up with won’t be able to figure out what orientation a given particle has in relation to the camera.

The only thing I can think of is if your comp is actually a loop of the card flipping and you have particular loop it randomly. I’m not sure if that will give you what you want though.

How many card particles are you talking about? There may be other options.

Dan

[Francisco Garcia]

Thanks Dan. I have been experimenting with the flipping card comp today, with dubious results. For some reason particles are disappearing and appearing. The idea was to have a bunch of playing cards moving across the screen with random rotations, use of gravity etc. I am not that well versed with particular, so I presumed that maybe a 3d object created in AE could be used as a custom particle. Guess I was wrong. Maybe in the next version. I was able to get really good results with a twelve card layer comp, using random still frame. The way particular 2 handles lighting is really beautiful. It’s just too bad that something that could seem simple, like showing the other side of the cards, is proving impossible.

[Darby Edelen]

Particular doesn’t allow you to have 2 sided particles.

I’m racking my brain now to try and come up with a work around for you, but it’s a tough one!

Darby Edelen

[Criis Daw]

Particular does allow 2 sided particles…. sort of

well it sees them as one sided but if the animation of the particle reveals both sides, then both will show when the animating particle plays.

I am not sure how to post a project up for you to download but i have used this technique to create ticker tape and leaves falling…and will gladly share them with you.

[Francisco Garcia]

Hi Chris, thanks for the response. I guess the work around you are referring to has been discussed. Instead posting your project, why don’t you explain a bit the work flow you used, and what the final effect was.

[Criis Daw]

because it would be easier to demonstrate than explain.

make a comp that will be the particle.
make it two 3d layers
attach these to a null
make them move/flip/rotate etc in 3d space via the null

(adding an adjustment layer with bezier warp and keyframing this can , depending on the look you are going for, really sell the effect.It worked really well for me simulating leaves)

use the particle comp as a custom particle. you probably need to set it to Loop random .so the particles dont all do the same movement at the same time.

That should get you started.

an example of using this this technique can be seen on my showreel

https://vimeo.com/10006393

at 1:10 where all the photos fall

cheers

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[Francisco Garcia]

cool, thanks Chris. Worked out well in the demo reel. I will try the bezier warp. Cheers

[Darby Edelen]

[criis daw] “Particular does allow 2 sided particles…. sort of”

Sort of is right 🙂

Based on the discussion I initially thought we were talking about the new “textured polygon” particle type in Particular 2, which doesn’t allow each side of the particle to have a different face and you can’t fake it with the standard animated particle trick you describe in your post.

Darby Edelen