Particle System Animation

This blog post is very late - sorry about that! (It's for 10/22)

In the past two months, as I am learning more an more about After Effects, I have found the CC Particle World and Particle Playground effects to be some of the most useful and awesome effects to work with.

I got a chance to look more into particle system animation and how it has developed over time. Simply reading through the theory behind particle systems helped me understand a lot.

The most important thing to know is that particle systems can be either animated or static - even though particle systems are usually just associated with being animated. An animated particle has it life trajectory spanned over time while a static particle is rendered all at once.

For things like fire, smoke, rain, sparks, etc., animated particles are used as each particle occupies a single point in the space position and then slowly fades out.

For things like hair, grass, etc., static particles are used as the entire life journey of the particle is rendered at once, therefore, creating strands - which can then be controlled.

Even when using the Particle World effect to simply create a small fire, there are so many things to be controlled and it can seem overwhelming. I found this video from a game engine called Unreal Engine and the video goes over some basic and complex particle terminology. So if someone is interested in developing games, especially shooter games, check this out.

Typically, the particles are generated through what is called an emitter. The emitter holds a position in 3D space which can be manipulated to determine the amount, shape, size, and direction of the particles among other properties. 

There is a lot more information out there if someone is interested in learning more about particle systems.

How far we've come

So I saw this commercial the other day and it made me think how far we've come this semester in Motion Graphics. Before this semester I wouldn't have had the slightest idea about the ins and outs of producing a commercial with graphics like this, but now I can saw with confidence that with time and effort I can probably do everything in this advert. Other than maybe the squirrels talking and the witches at the end, everything in this ad can be recreated in AE. There is definitely a lot of particle use and they for sure used green screens and keying. I think it's pretty sweet how I can see ads on TV now and say I can do that.

Fun with Particles

So last class I was really intrigued by the particle playground effect we used for the smoke. I started looking around and there are a number of different particle generators in after effects. I guess we'll just have to play with them all to see what is best. Anyway, there are a ton of different functions a particle generator could have. Immediately I thought about snow or precipitation or things like that. I began to look for some tutorials and I found a very cool and pretty easy to do one on video copilot. It is using a particle generating effect called trapcode particular to make cold breath. He alters a lot of the effect setting in order to make the breath realistic and it looks really cool. He also did a quick color correction to make the scene look like it was really cold, turning up the blues and what not. I thought it was pretty cool and definitely practical if you needed to shoot a cold weather scene and we happened to be having unseasonably warm weather.