AFTER EFFECT PARTICLE PLAYGROUND PDF
AFTER EFFECT PARTICLE PLAYGROUND MANUAL

You are not alone in your response 'huh? I tried to understand PP since he appeared initially (in what, AE3?) and I'm not outdone AE.

AFTER EFFECT PARTICLE PLAYGROUND MANUAL

Todd link on the manual pages are useful, in some way, but the particles is among the most strangely complex and exotic systems belonging to the family of After Effects. Try twiddling the knobs, just to get a feel for what they do.Hi. Don't just copy them though, they literally took me like five minutes, so you could easily refine them.

Here's a screenie of settings that produce a good gentle swirling particle effect. You can change the opacity of the layer as well as its Blending Mode to change how it interacts with other layers. Remember you can also add more effects before or after the particles to change how they look, eg, blurs, colour correction, distortion, and so on. You can muck around with colours, how the particle looks over time, and change the particle type here.

Lens uses the original colour of the layer it's on, in this case it's a solid. Next change the particle from the default line, to something else. Also, if you want the particles to be there at the start of the comp, slide the start of the layer a few seconds before the start of the comp. Once you've got them drifting gently upwards you might want to move the position of the producer down below the bottom of the frame, e.g a bit more than 1080px. Reading the manual is a start, but fiddling with the controls to see how they work is the best way. Play with the physics until you get it to look right. A little bit is probably good, but if you want the particles to all have random velocity you can leave it quite low, like 1 or 2. Resistance acts like friction, slowing the particles down from their initial velocity. For a gentle drift we'll turn Gravity right down, and make it negative. You probably want to turn the Velocity right down, maybe 0.1 or thereabouts. Twirly adds some random directional velocity, explosion adds velocity away from the producer, vortex makes them swirl around. For a more interesting movement you might try twirly. This sets the initial motion for the particles. You do this in the Physics section, using the Animation drop-down. They're shooting out of the producer at this point, so we'll turn that off. 15-20 seconds might be in the ball park for gently drifting particles. Since we're making the particles move more slowly we'll need to increase their longevity. You might also want to wind down the birth rate, to say something like 0.1. So the Radius X will be 1920 for a HD comp. We'll mke it the width of the comp, without making it any taller vertically. This is the area from which the particles are produced.

We're going to change it to look more like what you posted.įirst, open up the effects control window, and work though the settings.Ĭhange the producer size. If you add it to a layer you'll see this:īy default the effect produces particles exploding from a small spot, and they fall as if effected by gravity.

AFTER EFFECT PARTICLE PLAYGROUND PDF

A PDF manual for the cycore effects (all the CC-something effects that are included with AE) are here For example the CC Particle Systems II effect which is included with AE CS and later. There are numerous options for particles in AE, without needing any 3rd party plugins.

After effect particle playground