trapcode particular- custom layer emitter not working…

[Darby Edelen]

[shroomly] “could this be because its a clip from flash? i’ve exported it out of flash as a png sequence…should i be doing something else?”

If it’s an image sequence it shouldn’t matter where it’s coming from as long as you have an alpha channel in there =)

Out of curiousity, try boosting the particles/sec property in Particular, from my own limited experience with using layers as emitters (I usually use lights) I have a suspicion that Particular handles layers in an odd way.

This is all conjecture, but it seems as though 100 particles/sec with a Layer emitter means something like “try to emit a particle at a random location within the layer’s bounds 100 times per second but only emit it if the layer is visible at that point.” So if you have an image sequence that is 720×480 but only a small portion of that is visible, Particular might be emitting particles at any point in the 720×480 layer but only those that are emitted at a visible location end up being particles. So if your missile only takes up 1/100 of the area of the layer you’d have an effective particles/sec of 1 instead of 100. Again, this is all conjecture and you may be facing a different issue, but let me know if boosting the particles/sec helps.

[David Lieberman]

hya,
thanks for the help!!… i tried putting it down to one, but no change..

the missile png sequence is 720×576. the same size as the composition.. im guessing what u said about the image taking only part of the layer is true.. is there no way to assign the emitter to the ‘visible’ part of the sequence, hence the missile? that way i can animate particles coming out the back like smoke… i’ve also tried making a path with lights, but its proving very difficult to recreate the same path that the missile follows as the composition includes cameras in 3d space…

[David Lieberman]

what i also just noticed is, that when i increase the particles/sec to about 1000, a single particle or two appear next to the missile in very few spots in the timeline…hard to spot..

[Darby Edelen]

That’s kind of what I expected. I was recommending you increase your particles/sec not decrease to 1 by the way =)

I think you’d have better results if you built your missile animation in AE instead of Flash. This would allow AE, and thus Particular, to be aware of the layer’s motion which would help a lot in making a contrail. You could make a pre-comp for your missile, animate its motion in the final comp and parent a spotlight facing out the back of the missile to the pre-comp.

This would probably work better for you anyway as using a layer as an emitter can result in particles emitting from any part of the layer.

[David Lieberman]

is there any way to disable the 3d plaine for particles? in my comp, i have a cmera and loads of othe layers, when the particles are in a different comp they animate how i want them, but when i put them into the comp with the camera (which animates in a circular motion around the comp) the layer which contains the particles doesnt stay flat on the screen and moves out of place..

[David Lieberman]

thanx a lot!!! that was very helpful!

[Darby Edelen]

Particular creates each particle with its own 3D coordinates. If you want them to appear as though they aren’t in 3D space you can make the layer that Particular is applied to into a 3D layer, which is kind of illogical but has the effect of forcing the particle layer into a flat 3D plane just like other 3D layers in AE.

[David Lieberman]

thanx again!!!