History: Particular and the birth of Form

Here are two "historic" AE project files that I originally created and posted to the AE-list in 2005.

Download the first one - the black and white: particular4df.aep
Download the second one - the colorful (below): particular4df_mcol.aep

These two AEP's were incredibly appreciated. The colorful one was over time downloaded more than 20000 times from Trapcode People. There was only one problem - people didn't understand how they worked. And admittedly it was a bit complicated having to use the rather exotic Layer Emitter and Layer Grid Emitter. 

I thought about it for a while and decided to try and make a new plug-in to make these types of effects more accessible - I called it "Flux". We did some previews and it became clear that "Flux" sounded too similar to the already existing "Lux" (specially over the phone!) so we decided to rename it. I choose the name "Form" because I think it described the functionality and I've always liked the Form/Emptiness duality that creates everything in this world. During development Form evolved so it can do much more than these types of effects.

Smoketrail

A spherical map of the sky (from Dosch Design) is mapped using Trapcode Horizon to the background in this comp. Trapcode Particular was used for the smoketrail.

Download AE 7.0 AEP - smoketrail.aep

This example is covered in the Horizon tutorial at around time 8:30

Trapcode Horizon and Particular. Some pretty advanced expressions to guide the smoketrail and the trailing camera. Note that since the camera is moving quite a lot, the spherical map has to depict something at infinite distance for it to look right. Two different cameras are used, one that follows the smoketrail in flight:

And another camera that stays on the ground simulating a hand-held view of the smoketrail. Note that this is the exact same animation - it is the same comp - but with second camera:

Crazy Rainbow Smoke

Trapcode Particular used to create a crazy smoketrail rainbow. Six Light Emitters are parented to a 3D null. The null is animated on a path in 3D space and the Light Emitters follow.

Download AE 6.0 AEP - crazy_rainbow.aep

Text to Sand

View quicktime movie

Uses Trapcode Form to create an effect of Text (or any image) turning into sand.

Download AE CS3 AEP - text_to_sand.aep 

Shine smokescreen

Advanced example: Trapcode Shine with smoke. Uses Fractal Noise to generate a smokescreen.

A 3D null-object "lightpos" is used to position the Source Point of Shine using an expression.

The logo and the smokescreen are 3D layers. The smokescreen layer is placed in front of the logo layer towards the camera. The camera is animated to move from left to right and auto-oriented towards the logo.

Shine is applied to an adjustment layer and smokescreen is used as a luma matte for that layer to create the look of rays in smoke. This adjustment layer is not shown in the illustration above because it is a 2D layer. 

The smokescreen layer is an animated Fractal Noise effect with keyframes set for Evolution and Offset Turbulence

Thanks to Scott Frizzle of Artifact for the inspiration!

View quicktime movie

Download AE 5.0 AEP - smoke.zip