[Alan Lorence]

[Elvis Deane] “I think that was done by using an emitter as a displacement or bump map in a 3D program”

I believe the “don’t erase” option was used as well, so the particles “draw” the cracks.

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

You’re in unchartered waters, so it’s all experimentation. I personally would NEVER consider using a 2-minute (3600 frame) sequence for a particle type. Do you really need it to be that long?

Can you describe in more detail what the end result is that you want? What is the final output resolution, how large (approximately) will the particles be, how long is the final rendering clip going to be? etc.

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

I think this may be a browser issue. What browser are you using?

Note that our user forum is actually the CreativeCow particleIllusion forum, so all of the technical issues of the forum are best handled through them.

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

After reading your other post too, it sounds like you have an emitter that is creating a HUGE number of particles. The best way to deal with it is either in the library manager or the emitter properties dialog — both places where you can turn off preview of the particles.

If you know which emitter it is, the easiest way (I think) is to select a different emitter in the library window (but from the same library that contains the “bad” emitter) then open the props dlg for the library (double-click a non-bad emitter, or r-click and “properties”).

Then disable the preview in the props dlg, select the “bad” emitter, select the “number” graph and set its value to something really low — like 1. Remember that there are several hierarchy layers, so maake sure you modify the emitter “number” value and not just the particle type value.

I’m guessing this is an area emitter — they can create some huge number of particles since the area of the emitter has an effect on the number of particles too.

Version 3.5 will have some way to deal with this problem, since even I sometimes accidentally create an emitter with way too many particles, and everything…. just …. comes… to… a….. stop…..

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

I think I have a demo version that doesn’t check the screen resolution. Email me at support at wondertouch dot com.

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

The WibWobWeb site (which appears to no longer be) had a “sandpile” tutorial and sample project. Does anybody have that? It’s exactly what you’re looking for.

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

Ok, try the “run with software rendering” option in the Start – Programs – particleIllusion 3 menu.

If that works, then it’s an OpenGL issue and you’ll need to get updated video drivers for your machine from the NVidia site. 95% of the time it’s a video driver issue with pIllusion 3 for Windows.

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

This should be a pretty simple emitter — still need it? I can work on one for this month’s library. When do you need it by?

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

Is this Windows or Mac?

If Windows, try the “reset default settings” menu option in the Start – Programs – particleIlluson 3 menu.

If Mac, try deleting the pIllusion3demo.prefs file in your user/Library/Preferences folder.

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

Oh, tough assignment. If it were assigned to me, I would approach it the following way:

1) Realize that it will take 2 emitters. The first leaves the sparkle trail, so I’d get that looking the way I wanted first.

2) When it’s done, I’d copy it, convert the new copy to an area emitter, then make the particles fly away from the logo — keeping in mind that I’ll be reversing this sequence of frames later, so they’ll be rendered as starting at the logo shape and flying out. Note that I will need to adjust the particle “velocity over life” graph so the particles start slower and pick up speed over time, or start fast and slow down over time (remember that I will reverse the frames).

3) When they’re moving the way I want them to, use the “area emitter mask” option to use my logo (the alpha channel of the logo image) to define where the particles will be created.

4) render this sequence and reverse the frames in AE (or wherever)

5) combine with the initial trail sparkle sequence.

Although the exact same particles from the trail won’t be moving in to create the logo, I think it will be close enough to look convincing, especially if there are a lot of particles.

I hope this is enough detail to get the idea across.

I don’t think you’ll regret pressing that “buy” button. If you’re like many of our customers, you’ll buy pIllusion for one specific thing, and end up using it for almost anything you can.

Alan.
wondertouch