Randomizing many, many dots

[Clint Milner]

You could try CC Particle World… Pretty good and will render in a 3D space…

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[Rosa Jurjevics]

Thanks for the reply! I’m looking into this. I’m not much of a particle user, so I’m wondering: How to make them APPEAR and then stay in one spot rather than explode or burst?

Thanks,
R

[Greg Burrus]

There are a bunch of effects in after effects that create dots or circles like, scatterize, starburst, ball action, etc… It just depends on how you want it too look and playing with the settings to get what you want.

If you used CC particle world you could set it up as a disc or lens convex and 0 out all of the physics. So they just explode out then you could just freeze the animation in a precomp. If you don’t want it to explode just freeze them already out and mask them in or what ever way you want them to appear.

I know trapcode particular as a preset for a starfield which is just bunch of star like shapes in space you could adapt that to you needs as well.

If you want a lot of any one or multiple items your going to probably want to use some sort of effect or particle system other wise it will take a while to build.

hope that helps,

Greg

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[Brian Charles]

Under Physics set the Velocity to 0 and Gravity to 0.

Set the particle Longevity as long as you need it.

[Rosa Jurjevics]

I know, it’s a ton of dots!

To (try) and answer your questions:

1) Not sure what res I will be working in…
2) The dots will be all one color
3) They are not making a pattern, but should appear in a line — maybe there’s a way I can make them appear on a motion path?
4) They can be all the same size — they don’t have to, though.
5) 3D space not needed.
6) Not animated (unless you count popping)
7) I would like them to pop into space and then freeze

Thanks!!

[Brian Charles]

Dave’s question about resolution is important since you want these dots to appear in a line.

I’m going to assume you want multiple lines, since 20,000 dots in one line would require at least 20,000 pixels in one dimension.

Particle systems may prove too difficult to control for the look you want. You could try using a repeater on a shape layer and animate the repeater value.

Resolution comes into play since the dots can’t be smaller than a pixel, in fact you will need them larger if you’re working interlaced.

[Rosa Jurjevics]

You make a great point. I didn’t even think of that, which I probably should have. Let me amend. How about 100 dots? Even 2 dots at this point would be good 🙂

[Rosa Jurjevics]

Okay, here is a picture. Please excuse the HORRIBLE scan…

The dots should appear at random and then stay put. Hopefully my drawing makes sense!

THANKS!!

[Martti Ekstrand]

You could do this with ‘type on a path’ and chose a ding bat style font with a suitable dot. Then animate the opacity and set it to let the dots come on randomly. Add as many paths / text layers as needed to get the amount of dots you want. Edit the paths shape and position as you please as well.

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