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)

Labels: After Effects, Trapcode Particular

posted by Harry @ 3/06/2007 09:15:00 AM | 1 comments links to this post  

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.

View movie sample

Download Preset

If you do not have Trapcode Particular, download a free demo.

Today is also my cat Charlotte's 15th birthday.

Labels: After Effects, Trapcode Particular

posted by Michele Yamazaki @ 2/14/2007 08:53:00 AM | 0 comments links to this post  

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.

Labels: Adobe, After Effects, Digital Anarchy, Maxon Cinema 4D, Red Giant Magic Bullet, Red Giant Software, Tips, Trapcode Particular

posted by Michele Yamazaki @ 2/07/2007 07:46:00 PM | 0 comments links to this post  

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]

Download preset (AE 7)

View Sample Movie

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)

Mac
Windows

Labels: After Effects, Preset, Trapcode Particular

posted by Michele Yamazaki @ 12/14/2006 10:33:00 AM | 0 comments links to this post