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“popcorn maker” effect
okay, here’s one for you.
I have an animation that I am working on wherein a bunch of different toys need to build up and overflow out of the top of a glass case and onto the surface of a table. The toys themselves are all still frames of Illustrator files, but the case itself is shot.
The best way I can describe how I need it to look is like the old popcorn makers that bubble up in the pan and overflow into a tray.
I believe that the best way to do this is by using a particle generator, but I’ve run into a few issues:
1. The particles need to repel each other, thus allowing them to build up on top of one another.
2. I’m going to need to set up a few flow maps to direct the flow of the particles, eg, the inside of the glass case, over the rim of the case, and the surface of the table.
3. I need to make it so that each particle is a different image (I think I can achieve this by precomping all of the layers, making them each one frame long and sequencing them.
I’ve looked at different particle emitters: foam, particular, etc. None of these generators allow me to do all of these three things. The only one that does is (gulp) particle playground. Which I haven’t used in about three years.
Can anybody lend some insight, help, or perhaps a step in the right direction here? Or is this way too ambitious of an animation to try to use particles for? Maybe I should just brute force it. I’m pretty stumped.
Any help would be greatly appreicated.
Thanks in advance,
-AW
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8 Replies
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Particle Playground, while render heavy, is the right way forward, it can do all three things you need, you just have to precomp your illustrator files so that each one is a single frame. I can’t quite remember the setting for doing that, but I seem to recall it’s fairly easy. The Cow tutorials could probably tell you better than I could anyway.
Hope that helps
Graham
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Hi, Adrian
Here is a link to a book that I’ve got, it’s got an example of how to make out of static images, a bowl where popcorn pops out like in a popcorn maker, I think exactly the effect you want to achieve?
let me know if I must upload a sample of the finished version of the effect if you want?
the book:
After Effects and Photoshop: Animation and Production Effects for DV and Filmthe link:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0782143172/ref=pd_qpt_gw_3/102-1767054-9340919?n=283155
Click “Search inside this book, and look in the table of contents, Chapter 4.
let me know if this helps.
Thanks,
Derrick -
Also, I hat to be a cop out, but a 3D app like C4D can do this in a second since their particles systems are way more flushed out with many dynamics options. Plus you can easily model a popcorn bowl with a quick lathe. Cretae a handful of particles that repel each other, have gravity and stay inside the bowl until they are free. Then instance flat plane primitives to the particles and map the illustrator images onto them.
You can also do a quick Xpresso (if in C4D) expression so the planes always face camera. In C4D if you have say 10 plane objects each with their own picture on them and drop them into a particle object it will automatically randomly assign them tho the patrticles.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
I checked out the book on amazon. Looks interesting, but if you can post a finished movie so I can see if is what I need that’d be great. I’d like to besure it is what i need before I run out and buy the book.
Thanks for the speedy reply!
-AW
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Don’t know Cinema 4D at all, but there are a few guys in the office who may be able to help me out.
I’ll look into is if my particle playground exploits don’t work out. Thanks!
-AW
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about how many total toys will there be in the case?
if they are big toys and there are less than 20 or so – you could have keyframed the whole thing by now instead of waiting for responses 🙂i’d take the time and keyframe it and not deal with the particles
you can also add squash and stretch this way and make it look a lot nicer. -
Ok, check it out, the popcorn actually falls out of the bowl, but by tweaking the project slightly you can make it pop out.
here is the sample movie:
http://www.malagold.co.za/ComplexPopcorn-320.mov (It’s only 660Kb)
Does this help?
Thanks,
Derrick -
Wow that’s fairly impressive. I’ll have to go and check out that book. Thanks again.
-AW
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