Particular by James Martin

Particular from James Martin | Vim & Vigor on Vimeo.

A short experiment with Trapcode Particular by James Martin.

Comments

[Jean-Marie Marbach]

Very nice render, but also a perfect example of one of P2's flaws : Opaque particle interaction.
Look at how these 100% opaque particles suddenly disappear from one frame to the other. I know the only way to deal with this would be some kind of collision detector, which would probably make the render times insane, but still... This problem can severely limit other great features, like particle shading and shadowlets...

[Peder Norrby]

Yes, that is a weakness of sprite-based particles. They flicker in some situations. There is no good way around it, other than actually using real 3D geometries as particles and intersect them properly. The Textured Polygon particle type could be improved by adding spatial intersecting of particles, but for camera-facing sprites there is no solution. I have been experimenting with a proximity-fade but no good results so far.

For this clip, I actually don't mind the flickering (but that's just me of course)

Peder Norrby / Trapcode

[Dan Sollis]

Could you add an optional depth z-buffer layer for sprite sources maybe? Or if you want to go really crazy have voxel particles :)

[Frank Knabben]

Dear James,

I see that you are very skilled with Trapcode plugins that's why I want to ask you something.
Do you know how to create advanced realistic lightning(like a thunder bolt) using Particular/Form? Or is there a good tutorial that covers this effect?

Thank you for your time,
Frank

P.S. Keep up the good work!

[Dan Sollis]

Frank - there's a plugin built into After Effects to simulate Lightning and electrical sparks and it does a pretty good job. Look for "Advanced Lightning".
I did some tests and doing it in Particular doesn't generate very good results. You might be able to use it to augment the effect though.

[James Martin]

Hi Frank,

The lightning is "Advanced Lightning" and was done entirely frame by frame :)