Happy Holidays from Toolfarm!
We have a special gift for you. View your card and download some free presets for After Effects and Motion!
Thank you, and have a wonderful holiday.
Trapcode: 3D Stars
Ko Maruyama has a nice tutorial movie on extruding shapes into Trapcode Particular at Digital Producer.
My Favorite Particular Things
I compiled my favorite Particular presets from the last year and stuck them right here!
There are 14 presets total, including a few never seen here or at Trapcode-people.net.
Alpha Emitter – Particular
This is a project based on a question over in the Toolfarm After Effects forum. The question was how to make keyed footage emit particles, specifically letter particles. I can’t think of a better use for Particular than this.
Particular can use any layer as an emitter, as long as its 3D switch is turned on. In this case, footage keyed with Keylight is in its own comp and serving as the particle emitter.
Particular can also use any layer as a particle. Also, that particle layer can be split up, so that Particular emits multiple particle types. In this project, there is a comp with the letter particles in it. There is an expression forcing the letters to increment once per frame as well as randomly capitalize. This way, the typeface is easily adjustable, as there is only one type layer. There’s actually two layers of particles, to get a little more scattered and layered look.
Free Comp from LME! Trapcode Particular Preset
LME has graciously provided a freebie that is an extra bonus file from each of their sets of gorgeous comp files. These are Toolfarm exclusives and we’ll be posting one per week until they’re gone. Here is the second in the series. This sample is not included in the Trapcode Particular Presets and Comps.
- Download the Free Comp (AE 6.5.1 and up)
- View sample movie
- View Amazing Video Walls & Photo Displays gallery – see what’s included in the full collection
- Buy Trapcode Particular Presets and Comps – Only $132 (Save 5%!). 100 presets and matching comps. The possibilities are only limited to your imagination. Works with After Effects 6.5 or higher for Mac and Win.
If you didn’t catch last weeks freebie, it’s here.
As an added bonus, Trapcode Suite is 20% off this week! Sale runs March 12-16. Trapcode Suite includes Particular, 3D Stroke, Shine, Lux, Starglow, Echospace and Soundkeys.
Lite Brite with Particular
Lite Brite.. I’m sure you had one. Now you can relive the good old days in After Effects using Particular.
This uses two Layer Grid emitters, each one producing ever other line and offset from each other in the X axis, to get the distinct pattern. Drop your own video in the “Source” comp and watch the Lite Brite magic.
Download the Lite Brite project
(AE 7)
Heart wipe with Particular
This project contains two comps. The first, called Heart, uses a heart shape mask layer in the precomp with Hue/Sat applied. There are wiggle expressions on the Hue and Saturation to give some variance in the color.
The second, which is the main comp, has some text that wipes on using a linear wipe. The heart effect is Trapcode Particular. I modified one of the presets quite a bit and used the heart layer as my image. I timed the linear wipe and the movement of the heart wipe and voila! Love is in the air.
If you do not have Trapcode Particular, download a free demo.
Today is also my cat Charlotte’s 15th birthday.
After Effects New York User Group’s First meeting Feb 22
Adobe After Effects New York (AENY) first meeting is set for February 22. There is no fee for this event, thanks to sponsorship from Adobe and Pratt Manhattan. They are covering Maxon Cinema 4D 10 and After Effects Integration, as well as Mograph, Stephen Neary will present "Bigfoot’s Eulogy" and Aharon Rabinowitz will be presenting some quick After Effects tips. I met Aharon at NAB NY.
They’re giving away LOADS of door prizes including Red Giant Software: Magic Bullet Suite, MB Colorista and Trapcode Suite (all Trapcode Plug-ins), three Wondertouch particleIllusion licenses, GridIron Nucleo and Nucleo Pro, Cinema 4D and Mograph, Sorenson Squeeze Power Pack, Automatic Duck, Digital Anarchy PlasmaFX, Cycore FX and more. Wow…. good stuff, indeed.
Trapcode Particular Smoke Wisp
I never cease to be amazed at the flexibility of Trapcode Particular. Just when you think you’ve maxed it out, someone else gives you another idea.
The wisps are pretty flexible. Their shapes are simply created with animated mask shapes. This was created specifically for some rising steam from a branding iron, but use it for whatever you want.
Download the AE7 project here
Aurora Borealis
I really enjoy astronomy and keep an eye to the sky. This week is the Geminid meteor shower and today Space Weather is reporting that a “coronal mass ejection (CME) hit Earth today at approximately 1400 UT, and the impact may cause strong geomagnetic storms.” You know what that means? Auroras!
Sadly, I’ve lived in Michigan my entire life and have never seen an aurora. We’re known for our cloudy and overcast conditions and cold winters, so that does inhibit one from going out and seeing the real deal. Plus, I live in the city and the light polution often kills the experience. In other words, I’ve only seen video of auroras, so this is my interpretation of the beauty of an aurora.
I’ve created a preset for an aurora which uses Trapcode Particular and Fast Blur, as well as a crazy expression that uses some advanced geometry. I’m still learning expressions and I tend to keep modifying the values until I get what I like. I wanted a large wavy movement that moved from left to right across the screen, in a somewhat random manner. I’m sure the expression could’ve been done a bit more neatly, but it gets the job done and it’s very easy to modify.
The following was applied to Particular’s X,Y Position.
a=Math.sin(time*5)*50;b=Math.sin(time*400)*20;y=a*b;x=random(y,a);[x, y]
If you need a demo of Particular, you can download the full Trapcode Suite here (Shine, 3D Stroke, Echospace, Sound Keys, Starglow, Lux, Echospace and Particular)
