Cloudscapes in Trapcode Form by Dan Sollis

An experiment using Trapcode Form to generate organic effects - in this case, a cloudbank. 

The After Effects project is available to download from the Digital Distortion website. Optical Flares was used for the sun flare effect - though I've also put an optional AE lenseflare in there (disabled by default) for those who don't have that plugin. You should get it though - it's awesome!

Project is for AE CS3 and above.  The soundtrack is "Sarcophagus" by Conelrad

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.

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 

A on Fire

View quicktime movie

Advanced: Using Trapcode Form to set a letter on Fire. 

Download AE 6.0 AEP AonFIRE.aep

Particular v2 - Massive

Particular v2 - Massive from Peder Norrby on Vimeo.

Download AE CS3: AEP

Eight pre-made comps with Trapcode Particular v2 using massive amounts of particles. Download the AEP and play with the settings! There are seven extra comps in there as well - so 15 comps all-in-all! + one edit for benchmarks. Uses Trapcode Lux, Form and Horizon in some comps.

The massive amounts of particles are generated using the Aux system which is a function that allows emitting particles from particles. The Aux particles create trails from the main particles. These are then in turn affected using different things like gravity, turbulence etc.

Took me 45 mins to render the "edit" comp (consisting of eight comps, 47 secs in total) using my MacBook Pro 2.5 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo. What's your render time and hardware? 

How about hooking up Emitter Position to Sound Keys? Could be worth a try!

Design & Music by Peder Norrby / Trapcode / Rymden

Download AE CS3 AEP

The music is available under Creative Commons Attribution license for download: http://soundcloud.com/rymdenmusic/pentagram-mstr