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  • Adobe After Effects

    Particular render order issue

    Posted by Rich Seemueller on January 8, 2009 at 3:13 pm

    I have begun work on a new project. I am trying to get a certain effect with Particular, but am relatively new in using it. Here is a screenshot of the roughed together animation so far:

    https://www.flickr.com/photos/seemodesign/3179148617/

    What I want to achieve is having the particle stream in the foreground start low and circle around the girl as it goes vertical. I can get the animation correct, but it remains in front of the girl due to it being in front of her in the render order. I know that cameras recognize Particular as being in 3D space, but it seems as though the render order dictates what it’s in front of rather than the 3D placement of the emitter. If I move it below the girls layer, than it remains below it.

    Is there a way to achieve this effect?

    Thanks in advance for your help!

    pdhc_opening_rough

    Kevin Camp replied 17 years, 4 months ago 2 Members · 3 Replies
  • 3 Replies

  • Kevin Camp

    January 8, 2009 at 4:42 pm

    particular has a nice feature called the obscuration layer (it’s in the visibility properties). this allows you to set a layer to be used in the plugin’s 3d space to make it seem like the particles move around that layer.

    so, you can set the girl layer as the obscuration layer and the particles will seem to move around that layer.

    note that the girl layer will need to be a 3d layer so the particle system can get the 3d coordinates from it’s position (basically, it needs to know when a particle is in front or in back of the layer in 3d space).

    Kevin Camp
    Senior Designer
    KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

  • Rich Seemueller

    January 8, 2009 at 4:49 pm

    thanks so much for the tip. is it possible to have multiple obscuration layers? there are several layers i’m wanting this to happen around. if worst comes to worst, i can fudge it and have the path of the emitter dip off screen and start a new one that comes back on the same path with a different layer. if possible i’d like to avoid this though, as the camera is following the particles relatively closely.

    thanks again!

  • Kevin Camp

    January 8, 2009 at 5:05 pm

    unfortunately, there is only one obscuration layer.

    depending on your other layers and positions and such, you may be able to precomp some of those elements with the girl layer, essentially, making it a single layer for particular to use as the obscuration layer…

    Kevin Camp
    Senior Designer
    KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

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