[Mark Briody]

Thanks! I will download your project and have a look.

[Mark Briody]

Thanks Alan,

That’s basically what I need to do except for one thing. In that tutorial the particles come off in a nice straight edge.

The client I’m working for really wants the logo to blown off in a swirling organic looking fashion.

Here is what I’m trying now –

Create an AVI in After Effects using my smoke transition as a gradient wipe to solid black. It should look like the logo is transitioning to black in an organic smoky way.

Then take the AVI into Particle Illusion and have position a smoke emmiter on top this, animating the position to follow the logo.

[Mark Briody]

The problem I’m having is getting the logo to look like it’s being blown away from left to right.

I’ve used the ‘get color from layer’ a lot in PI, so I’m familar with that. But how would you ‘take color’ from a layer?

I’ll try to explain what I mean – In basic PI emitters using ‘color from layer’ the color seems to steam continuosly from the layer. How would you simulate just one layer of color, meaning that when it became a particle the layer color was also gone.

[Mark Briody]

As suggested from the other poster, a good compressor is crucial to this sound.

Voxengo (a small audio plugin company that makes great products) makes a voice channel strip plugin that works well for this sound. Reasonably priced too.

[Mark Briody]

Thanks! Much appreciated! This was driving me crazy. I was so used to working the other way.

[Mark Briody]

I won’t say this is impossible, but AE is entirely the wrong program for that look.

Any 3d app (Maya, XSI, Max, Lightwave, etc) can accomplish this effect in a number of ways.

[Mark Briody]

I do this effect by creating a Photoshop psd file. The main layer is the photograph and the layer above it is the person cut out.

By bringing in both layers to AE and setting up a parent/child relationship you can pan/scan/scale the image and it will appear to be just a photo. But any time I want that look I just move or scale the top layer only (the person cutout layer). This gives the illusion that the cutout is popping out of the photo.

Mark

[Mark Briody]

I don’t think his intent is to spell everything out for you. His tutorials are not beginner level After Effects projects.

I get so much out of his website because it forces me to experiment and pull out the manuals to read about some of the techniques he uses.