[Alan Lorence]

I haven’t seen the effect in question, but first you’ll need to generate a “mask” (in another app) in the shape of the person you want particles to fill, then save it in an alpha channel. In particleIllusion you can use the “area emitter mask” option to create the particles in the shape of the person using the alpha channel you created.

A similar thing is here I think:

https://www.creativecow.net/leaders/deane_elvis/deane_elvis.html

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

This is a complex scene. Involves a 3D-rendered environment. particleIllusion was used for a lot of the beam destruction “fire”, as well as the fountain water.

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

I don’t know. Output PNG from pIllusion, then… ?

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

There are a couple of “twist” emitters in the April 2005 library. You can use them as a starting point — probably just need to swap out the particle shape and reset the “size over life”.

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

If you don’t have “reset default settings” in your start menu — probably means you didn’t use the installer, which probably means you don’t have a legal copy.

You can also pass a “-reset” parameter on the command line.

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

If you’re on a Mac, pIllusionRender has not been released yet. Soon — before the end of Dec., but hopefully in 2 weeks.

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

Here’s what I would do.

Isolate the cow in AE as you suggest. You don’t need the cow itself for the pIllusion emitter, but you need to be able to make the cow “disappear” after it explodes.

For the emitter, I would start with some existing explosion-type emitter. Something fast because the cow will be close to the camera I assume (as opposed to far off in the distance). I might even start with the “dust puff” emitter — don’t remember where it is. Change the color of the dust to red to turn it into a blood mist, then duplicate the particle type. This new particle type would then need the “cow chunks” images imported, probably increase the velocity, play with the size and weight parameters…

There’s a similar thing in the “making a frog go poof” tutorial. The AVI link is broken in that tutorial, but you can see the finished movie on our gallery page.

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

Yes you can, although it depends on how quickly you take to creating and/or tweaking emitters. A good first step would be download the demo and check out the docs, particularly the “change shape page” section of Tutorial 3.

You can also email support at wondertouch dot com with more specific questions.

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

The best format to render in pIllusion if you plan on bringing it into another application for further processing (such as After Effects) is to save in a lossless format. Neither Sorenson nor Flash Video is lossless (I believe). You’re better using the Animation QuickTime codec, or the Hhuuf UV codec, or saving as a TGA or PNG sequence.

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

The explosions_01 library has some spark emitters… there are more somewhere too… March 2004 has some too, but they’re super emitters — you can adjust it to look like a regular emitter too.

Alan.
wondertouch