Particular, emitting random custom particle

[Darby Edelen]

[jporter313] “So I need to set up a particular emitter so it emits different words at random, however, I have no idea how I’d set it up so that each custom particle emitted is from a different source.”

You can choose an emitter shape such as Box or Sphere and increase the size of the emitter. Your particles will be emitted randomly within those bounds.

Alternatively, you can have multiple layers in your composition each with an instance of Particular applied.

…

As I read your post again it looks like I may have misunderstood what you meant by ‘source.’

If you want the emitter to choose a random word each time a particle is emitted you need to first create a pre-comp for your custom particle. Create your text layer in this pre-comp and animate it so that each frame in the pre-comp has a different word visible. Then set your Particular effect to use the pre-comp as a custom particle and under the Custom section choose “Random – Still Frame.”

Darby Edelen
Designer
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA

[Gustavo Saliola]

Thanks Darby! 14 years later, this one solved me a problem with a current mograph project. Needed to show a virtual space with “hundreds of far and tiny instagram profiles” which really only 12 exist. So made a small 9:16 precomp with (those) 12 frames and assigned as Sprite in Particular, with the Time option “Random – Still Frame.”