[Alan Lorence]

When you said “Register or continue” screen, I assumed SE, since the 3.0 demo doesn’t have a registration screen. It does have a demo reminder screen, but I don’t think that shows at startup.

I suggest using the “reset default settings” option in the Start – Programs – particleIllusion 3 menu. If that doesn’t do it, you should try the “run with software rendering” option in the same menu. If software rendering works, then you have an OpenGL problem and need updated video drivers.

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

I assume you’re talking about particleIllusion SE? You should email support at wondertouch dot com.

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

But you won’t “see” anything with a podcast — you’ll just hear it. =)

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

You specifically asked for a PNG sequence. A sequence is a series of images. Your other option is to save as AVI (on Windows) but then you can’t save an alpha channel. On Mac, you can save a QuickTime movie with an alpha channel if you choose a compressor that supports this (such as “Animation” set to the highest color depth).

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

particleIllusion has a 2D workspace (like a paint program), not a 3D workspace (like a 3D app). There is no “camera” that you can move, zoom, etc.

One suggestion that I can make for your live-action project: make the particle effects move FAST. The best fire effect will look goofy if it slowly shoots out of your son’s hands. Also, when you shoot the video, make sure you move in reaction to the “stuff” hitting you. Finally, you’ll probably want to do the final particles render with the background video turned off, save with an alpha channel, then composite in Vegas (instead of letting pIllusion do the composite).

I hope others will add tips too.

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

Just click the “Save Output” button (the red circle in the playback toolbar), then select PNG as the output type, and check the “save alpha” option in the output options dialog. That should do it.

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

I don’t know. It’s possible, although I haven’t thought about it much yet. I do have a couple of ideas.

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

That’s an example of a customer using pIllusion to generate an animated “fire” texture map, which was then used in a 3D application (Maya I think) as the texture map on the “mushroom cloud” object.

So you can’t do that 3D effect in pIllusion only.

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

I’m not sure how it will work either, but it can’t be worse than text-based information sources like this forum, right? Not ideal, but still useful.

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

There is a tutorial for that on the tutorials page of our website.

You can also do a search of this forum looking for “looping”.

Alan.
wondertouch