Dust Particles in After Effects

[swaggerStudios 0]

Does anybody know a good way to create realistic dust particles in After Effects? I want this to be a 3-d layer the camera can move around and through.

[Harry.noeg 0]

Try trapcode particullar:

 

but if your realistic mean is sooooo realistic i think one of 3d software packages is the choice.. if you need more advance particle control i suggested realflow

[swaggerStudios 0]

Try trapcode particullar:

 

but if your realistic mean is sooooo realistic i think one of 3d software packages is the choice.. if you need more advance particle control i suggested realflow

 

 

Cool...that's what I was hoping...but, do you know of any resources or tutorials that would help me achieve this effect in Particular? I'm kind of banging my head against the wall trying to create it with this.

[finegrit 0]

My old standby is to create a small white solid and write an expression that generates random 3D motion and rotation. For a starter on how to do that:

 

http://www.motionscript.com/mastering-expr...s/random-2.html

 

I'd usually pre-comp it, link some of the variable in the expression to sliders in the main comp so I can control the size of the dust field and its speed of movement.

 

Then duplicate that solid a few hundred times.

 

Originally I did this because particular lacked depth of field, but I still use it because all those little layers interact nicely with lights in AE.

 

If you're more adventurous in your programming abilities, you can also add some code to the expression so that they will interact with other layers, but that is another lesson...

[Loqutis 0]

Cool...that's what I was hoping...but, do you know of any resources or tutorials that would help me achieve this effect in Particular? I'm kind of banging my head against the wall trying to create it with this.

 

RealFlow can do dust as well? After looking at their site it looks like all liquid effects

Edited February 19, 2009 by Loqutis

[imcalledandy 0]

Cool...that's what I was hoping...but, do you know of any resources or tutorials that would help me achieve this effect in Particular? I'm kind of banging my head against the wall trying to create it with this.

 

 

Here's something to get you started, there's probably loads of tutorials online as a Google search will probably tell you... (also checkout the trapcode site for more info)

 

 

Use a custom particle, so create a new comp 200 x 200 with a masked solid (use pen tool to create a dust shape).

 

Apply fractal noise to the solid.

 

Experiment with the settings especially the brightness and contrast and use an expression like time*40 to animate the evolution to give you a bit of movement / variation.

 

Bring the particle comp into your comp with particular and turn its visibility off.

 

Tell particular to use your custom particle.

 

Experiment with size, opacity and the Air physics.

 

Hope this helps and best of luck

Edited February 20, 2009 by imcalledandy

[DeepOmega 0]

Turbulence is your friend. A nice, slow turbulence affecting position and scale will do wonders. Also, I like to do multiple layers of dust - foreground, midground, background - so I can do some glow-y effects on the bigger foreground ones, and knock stuff out of focus. I always have issues with DOF in particular, so I just do it myself.

[Colin@movecraft 0]

Good advice all around, particularly breaking your effect down into different layers.

 

Also remember basic compositing.

 

Dust in the air occludes what is behind it, doesn't add light to it. That means your fractal noise layers need to act as luma mattes for a ramp, as opposed to creating fog, which bends the light. We can simulate that in AE with blur on an adjustment layer. Read Mark Christansen's book cover to cover.

 

Here's both examples in file. cs3. No particle generators used. The expression slider drives a multiplier for the turbulence amount, in the fractal_generation comp.

 

www.movecraft.com/clients/movecraft/dust_fog.zip

 

c

[Douglas 0]

The Academy Award graphics package was showing a lot of dust particle love this year.

[Guest Sao_Bento]

The Academy Award graphics package was showing a lot of dust particle love this year.

That's just coke floating around.

[Colin@movecraft 0]

do the d.a.n.c.e.?

 

 

c

[iline 0]

@ imcalledandy - nice. Haven't done that before, looks dope. thx!

[iline 0]

If you use a light as the emitter, and mess around with the positioning and cone angle, then you can make that foreground layer really emulate the light hitting the bigger particles. This is great for putting particles into volumetric light sources and I can't believe I never played with it...

 

I'd like to put some optics distortion on these closer particles so it looks like refracted light, hmm....