Help with Particle Playground Cannon

I am using CS5, After Effects, Win 7. I have created an effect of someone sprinkling snow on a scene which loooks pretty good but I'd like the snow to fade to nothing over a period as it falls. I know I saw in another tutorial an option called something like dies or fades and a timespan selection. However, I cannot for the life of me find it. Can anyone help ?
Regards,
TL.

You will have to create a property map if you use Playground, which could be as trivial as a circle near the emitter that "imprints" a lifespan onto each particle. You will have to pre-compose the map. Otehrwise you might indeed try to look into otehr effects, though getting the snow to rest on anything will then be much more complicated...
Mylenium

Similar Messages

Crashing with Particle Playground: Color Picker.

Running Mac OS X 10.6.5, MacBook Pro.
Well, I make a Solid, I put Particle Playground, and then, I want to change a certain color of that effect, but as soon as I move my cursor on the Color Picker, After Effects crashes.
I downloaded After Effects, running on Trial.

Have you installed the After Effects CS5 (10.0.1) update? That update fixes a lot of problems.
If installing that update doesn't solve the problem, then try this: Remove the Mthread plug-in before starting After Effects (e.g., by dragging the plug-in to the desktop). The plug-in is in the following folder: Applications/Adobe After Effects CS5/Plug-ins/Extensions

Can't see particles in Particle Playground

I'm unable to see particles being created by the Particle Playground effect. I can apply the CC particle effects with no problem, but when I try it with Particle Playground I just get a black screen. The info window counts the particles and the timeline drags like it's trying to render, but nothing is visible. I've tried the Cannon, the Grid and the exploders. I've tried resetting the multiprocessing preferences. I've even reinstalled After Effects and run all updates, but no dice.
Any ideas?
Here are the specs
Adobe CS5
Mac OSX 10.5.8
Mac Pro
2 x 2.26 GHz Quad Core Intel Xeon processors
16 GB 1066 MHz DDR3 RAM

Thanks! Here are the screen shots.

Particle playground problem

Hi all
I have a problem with Particle Playground in AE 9.0.2.42.
The particles shown on full screen resolution are different from the ones on other (half/quarter) resolutions. For example i use a boundary wall to constrain the (custom mapped) particles and on the half and lower resolutions the behavior is excellent but when i switch to full the particles don't behave correctly (they tend to group in 10's or more).
Hope it makes sence...
Any ideas?
Thanks

You won't be disappointed if you purchase Particular. And there is a 2.0 upgrade coming up (see a demo here), but according to this PDF you'll only pay a dollar more if you buy now and upgrade later than if you were to wait to buy the full 2.0 version.
As for Particle Playground, I suspect Adobe includes it for the sake of supporting older projects that might have used it, but I doubt they consider it a serious offering today.

Particle Playground: trouble with wall and particle image

Hello Friends,
I'm fairly new to all of the fancy stuff in After Effects, particularly particles, but I've had a lot of success so far, and just one problem that I can't seem to figure out. Perhaps someone here can help me.
I'm trying to create a clip of a cartoon bride and groom being pelted by rice. I've got the image of the cartoon bride and groom, and it looks great. I then created a new solid layer and applied the Particle Playground effect, and positioned the cannon so the particles come in from offscreen (around the 10 o'clock position). I tried creating masks on the side of the bride and groom's heads (drawn with the pen tool) for the rice to bounce off of, and that part seemed to work, too. At this point, I have the default red squares as particles, and they're bouncing off of the masks just like I want them to, but they don't look anything like rice. I change the color to white, and it looks a lot better, but still not as much like rice as I'd like.
Now, I figure out how to use a layer map to create particles from an image. I use a new shape layer and use the shape tools to create a single grain of rice (a white elongated ellipse with a black stroke). I then set the layer map controls to my rice grain layer, and adjust the scale properties of the rice grain until I have particles that look perfect. Hundreds of grains of rice, all the right size and shape, and they all look great but they're all oriented in the same direction, so I've got to make them move in a more random way. My next step is to animate the rice grain layer to rotate three times in one direction, then back three rotations over the course of three seconds. I then set the parameters to create the particles from a random starting point in the three-second layer. Success! The rice looks like rice! It's the right size, shape, and rotates with the right degree of randomness!
But the boundary mask isn't working anymore. The cannon is shooting the rice particles everywhere but where the mask is, so I get none of the desired bounce and interaction. There's an empty swath where no particles are being generated, so there are particles above and below the wall mask, but none moving directly toward it as I want. It's as if the mask is keeping the cannon from creating particles.
I tried moving the mask away from it's original position, and it affects the creation of the particles, but not in a way that makes sense to me. I tried decreasing the diameter of the cannon, and it behaves almost as if the mask is right next to the cannon, not where it appears in the comp.
Does anyone have any ideas about this? It seems like I'm really close...

Technically, in a proper Image Sequence, all images are the same size/aspect ratio.
What you'll need to do is make on set (vertical or horizontal) a new size, to fit inside the other. The Particle Emitter will matte it's images to one or the other, which ever comes first.

Need help with cannon RAW photos

Please help- let my employee go and nearly 100 photos of my products were left on my hard drive, but I can not get them to open. They are somehow jacked up (show a different icon than they did). They have no previous version, and absolutely NOTHING I have tried to open them will work. Would someone be willing to test one to see if they can figgure it out? Or, has anyone fixed this problem before?

You are a genius! Now that I understand that those are support
files, and know what I am looking (at) and for- I found all the photos.
She left us in quite a mess- both with the photos and our web page so
thank you again for helping. Feel free to let me know if you need
anything in the future. I won't forget your help!
Cristi
910 10th Street, Greeley, CO 80631
P: 970-351-6398
F:
1-970-352-1085
[email protected]
facebook.com/AwardAlliance
www.awardalliance.com
Award Alliance is always doing cool
things on our facebook! Come like us, and maybe see your awards featured
there! (facebook.com/AwardAlliance)
On 2013-09-26 19:35, ssprengel
wrote:
RE: NEED HELP WITH CANNON RAW PHOTOS
created by
ssprengel in Photoshop Lightroom - View the full discussion

Trying to use Particle Playground

I just updated from CS4 to CS5 and suddenly I cannot use the Particle Playground effect. It worked just fine under CS4. Now...nothing.
I am on a MAC intel MacPro running 10.5.8 with 2 X 3.2 Quad core Intel Xeon and 10GB Ram
Any ideas would be appreciated.

This is quite an old post, but I am having exactly the same problem - particle playground produces nothing .
I'm running CS5 (AE 10.0.1.19) on a Mac Pro 2x 2.4GHz Quad Core Xeon with 12GB RAM & OS10.6.4
Even if I just create a new project, then new comp (any size, it makes no difference), new solid (comp size), then effect>particle playground, I get nothing - not even the stream of red dots that it produces by default. BUT, when I do a RAM preview, the info panel does its usual report of "number of particles: 116" etc. so it's actually calculating the particles, just not displaying them. I've tried tweaking the particles per sec, the grid settings, etc. etc....but nothing. I used to use particle playground a lot on CS3 & CS4, so it's not user error. I've tried tweaking the memory settings and turning multiprocessing and OpenGL off and on.
BUT - I have just discovered, if I use a layer map instead of the default particle dot, it works fine. So it's not as huge a problem as I first thought, as most of the time I use a layer map for the particle. But it would be nice to have if fixed!

Question regarding Particle Playground.

I'm trying to use particle playground to turn a logo into particle and when I did the logo's alignment is off.
This only happens when I precomp the layer and then apply the effect. It is properly aligned when I apply
on the layer directly. What is the problem? Is there a way I can apply the effect on the Pre Comp layer without the alignment
going off?
Please advice. Thanks

There are actually a few particle effect plug-ins included with After Effects. See this page for a list.
There are a lot of great particle plug-ins for After Effects. Trapcode Particular is very popular, full-featured, and well supported with tutorials and such. If the plug-ins that ship with After Effects don't do what you need, then Particular would be a good thing to check out.

Need help with a light effect

Hi All,
Im working with a scene in AE. Its a wide shot of trees that have hanging lights in them. The scene doesn't move for 10 seconds, and then it pans up to a black sky.
Basically what I want to achieve is an effect where lots of little lights burst of the lights in the trees and then move up (as the video pans up) to create a starry sky effect.
I know this probably wont be easy or a job for a beginner like myself but I wanted to ask here in case anybody knew of any "easy" way to do this. I do have all the Red Giant plug ins and BCC7 I could use. But am not sure if there is one specific plugin I should focus in on, or if there is a effect in AE to do this.
If anybody has any ideas, advice, or can even point me in the right direction id really appreciate it.
Thanks!

Hi Mylenium,
Thank You! That Particle Playground example is exactly what Im looking for. Are they any tutorials youre aware of that show you how to set it up? This way I could figure out how to move the "lights"in the light layer to be on the actual light sources. And then I assume I could just put an ajustment layer over it to make them look more like stars correct?
Best-
Eric

Help with time expression!

Hi everyone, I need some help with the time expression.
Im working with video copilot´s plugin element 3d and i've made a spere shaped thing with particles which im going to sync to music. The problem is that when i make the simple expression "time*321" on the noise evolution value to make the sphere move organicly throughout the whole video it only does so for about two minutes then it just stops changing even though the value changes. The pictures might help you understand.
Pictures: http://puu.sh/adNNB/e8de72a1e8.jpg, http://puu.sh/adNQJ/4fe8d4fe94.jpg, http://puu.sh/adNRx/8ecff2b2ca.jpg
Then there is another problem which is that the sphere evolves alot faster with the time set to 321 compared to when i have it on 30.
I hope you can help me and im sorry for my bad english just tell me if there is something you dont understand.

I think you are giving the rotation value more than it can handle. After a while, many of the values in AE will stop increasing because the math can't go any further. Here are two things for you to try.
1) Use this simple expression for increasing the value of something.
THE BIG PICTURE: ([Amount of Change] / [Number of Seconds]) * time
ROTATION EXAMPLE: (360 / 5) * time;   <----- This will rotate a layer 360º over 5 seconds. It will also continue to rotate until the end of the comp or you run out of math.
POSITION EXAMPLE: delta = (500 / 2) * time; // This changes the value of "delta" 500 units over 2 seconds and continues.
                                   x = value[0] + delta; // Uses the x value from frame 0 and adds the delta to provide movement
                                   y = value[1]; // Uses the y value
                                   [x, y] // sends the values back to the layer
2) Modulus will recycle the numbers. Using your current expression, you can add modulus, and use it to recycle your math.
EXPRESSION: (time * 321) % 360
The % is the modulus, and it resets the count every 360º.
Good luck!
Trent

Masking particles in particle playground

I've created a swarm of ants by using the explosive mode in particle playground. I want to have a jedi enter and wipe out the ants with swipes of his lightsaber. I thought I could add a series of masks to the particle playground layer each one taking effect succesively and making the ants in its region transparent. However, my first mask seems to have no effect on the layers alpha channel or the visibility of the ants.
1) Any guess at what I've missed?
2) Any suggestions for a better way to do this? (For example, is there a way to keyframe changes in a persistent property map set to opacity?)

As Rick said, pre-compos. PPlayground can use masks as collisions, hence it will not use them for Alpha and force AE into a different mode. Nesting is the only way to compensate for that.
Mylenium

Particle Playground in RAM preview

Using AE CS3 I've built a sequence involving the explosion effect of Particle Playground. I adjusted the Velocity Dispersion parameter to get a good expansion rate for the particles, using RAM preview at 50 percent resolutiion as a test bed. To my surprise, when I rendered the project, the particles flew at many time the rate seen in RAM preview. Any ideas as to why this happened or how to get the RAM preview to faithfully reflect the real render?

> Trapcode Particular is the third party plugin I use more than any other - it is quite simply the most useful plugin I've ever bought for AE,
b and worth every cent.
if you have the dime, everything will be fine...
just a note for the guys from the dev-team who probably may stumble over this thread: i'm not paying for Ae using it on a "experimental basis".
There are two presumptions: you are not capable of properly coding or lets say, having your software-development under control, or you are simply NOT WILLED to take a look into your code to see what else can be managed because you're so distracted by having this app work in somewhat future of Apples somewhat architecture?
i'm in serious anger with Ae every day using it. i don't think i need a higher degree in mathematics just to be able to control a pretty self-explanatory software. if software lacks in usability thus lacking in performance, why someone should spend any future dime on it?
I believe it has all to do with bureaucracy and fund, just to enhance a software systematically from version to version, not pushing the features at once whilst having them already in the top drawer since ages.
it's pure business. it has nothing to do with customer satisfaction nor with customer experience.
though, this forums and all it's peoples input from all aspects did had an impact on development. without it, we still would stuck in the middle 90ies.
Thanks for sharing.
personally i got tired of all this technical drawbacks. it caused me a lot of damage to my health, non billable hours and suffering in my
profession as a digital artist which i've started with pure passion.
I will quit my job and start doing something that makes really sense to me and my fellow men rather than hanging around for days/nights in front of a screen filled with problems.
I release myself from this forum. i wish you all good luck for the future and keep pounding.
cheers,
Thomas

Help with if statement in cursor and for loop to get output

I have the following cursor and and want to use if else statement to get the output. The cursor is working fine. What i need help with is how to use and if else statement to only get the folderrsn that have not been updated in the last 30 days. If you look at the talbe below my select statement is showing folderrs 291631 was updated only 4 days ago and folderrsn 322160 was also updated 4 days ago.
I do not want these two to appear in my result set. So i need to use if else so that my result only shows all folderrsn that havenot been updated in the last 30 days.
Here is my cursor:
/*Cursor for Email procedure. It is working Shows userid and the string
You need to update these folders*/
DECLARE
a_user varchar2(200) := null;
v_assigneduser varchar2(20);
v_folderrsn varchar2(200);
v_emailaddress varchar2(60);
v_subject varchar2(200);
Cursor c IS
SELECT assigneduser, vu.emailaddress, f.folderrsn, trunc(f.indate) AS "IN DATE",
MAX (trunc(fpa.attemptdate)) AS "LAST UPDATE",
trunc(sysdate) - MAX (trunc(fpa.attemptdate)) AS "DAYS PAST"
--MAX (TRUNC (fpa.attemptdate)) - TRUNC (f.indate) AS "NUMBER OF DAYS"
FROM folder f, folderprocess fp, validuser vu, folderprocessattempt fpa
WHERE f.foldertype = 'HJ'
AND f.statuscode NOT IN (20, 40)
AND f.folderrsn = fp.folderrsn
AND fp.processrsn = fpa.processrsn
AND vu.userid = fp.assigneduser
AND vu.statuscode = 1
GROUP BY assigneduser, vu.emailaddress, f.folderrsn, f.indate
ORDER BY fp.assigneduser;
BEGIN
FOR c1 IN c LOOP
IF (c1.assigneduser = v_assigneduser) THEN
dbms_output.put_line(' ' || c1.folderrsn);
else
dbms_output.put(c1.assigneduser ||': ' || 'Overdue Folders:You need to update these folders: Folderrsn: '||c1.folderrsn);
END IF;
a_user := c1.assigneduser;
v_assigneduser := c1.assigneduser;
v_folderrsn := c1.folderrsn;
v_emailaddress := c1.emailaddress;
v_subject := 'Subject: Project for';
END LOOP;
END;
The reason I have included the folowing table is that I want you to see the output from the select statement. that way you can help me do the if statement in the above cursor so that the result will look like this:
emailaddress
Subject: 'Project for ' || V_email || 'not updated in the last 30 days'
v_folderrsn
v_folderrsn
etc
[email protected]......
Subject: 'Project for: ' Jim...'not updated in the last 30 days'
284087
292709
[email protected].....
Subject: 'Project for: ' Kim...'not updated in the last 30 days'
185083
190121
190132
190133
190159
190237
284109
286647
294631
322922
[email protected]....
Subject: 'Project for: Joe...'not updated in the last 30 days'
183332
183336
[email protected]......
Subject: 'Project for: Sam...'not updated in the last 30 days'
183876
183877
183879
183880
183881
183882
183883
183884
183886
183887
183888
This table is to shwo you the select statement output. I want to eliminnate the two days that that are less than 30 days since the last update in the last column.
Assigneduser....Email.........Folderrsn...........indate.............maxattemptdate...days past since last update
JIM.........      jim@ aol.com.... 284087.............     9/28/2006.......10/5/2006...........690
JIM.........      jim@ aol.com.... 292709.............     3/20/2007.......3/28/2007............516
KIM.........      kim@ aol.com.... 185083.............     8/31/2004.......2/9/2006.............     928
KIM...........kim@ aol.com.... 190121.............     2/9/2006.........2/9/2006.............928
KIM...........kim@ aol.com.... 190132.............     2/9/2006.........2/9/2006.............928
KIM...........kim@ aol.com.... 190133.............     2/9/2006.........2/9/2006.............928
KIM...........kim@ aol.com.... 190159.............     2/13/2006.......2/14/2006............923
KIM...........kim@ aol.com.... 190237.............     2/23/2006.......2/23/2006............914
KIM...........kim@ aol.com.... 284109.............     9/28/2006.......9/28/2006............697
KIM...........kim@ aol.com.... 286647.............     11/7/2006.......12/5/2006............629
KIM...........kim@ aol.com.... 294631.............     4/2/2007.........3/4/2008.............174
KIM...........kim@ aol.com.... 322922.............     7/29/2008.......7/29/2008............27
JOE...........joe@ aol.com.... 183332.............     1/28/2004.......4/23/2004............1585
JOE...........joe@ aol.com.... 183336.............     1/28/2004.......3/9/2004.............1630
SAM...........sam@ aol.com....183876.............3/5/2004.........3/8/2004.............1631
SAM...........sam@ aol.com....183877.............3/5/2004.........3/8/2004.............1631
SAM...........sam@ aol.com....183879.............3/5/2004.........3/8/2004.............1631
SAM...........sam@ aol.com....183880.............3/5/2004.........3/8/2004.............1631
SAM...........sam@ aol.com....183881.............3/5/2004.........3/8/2004.............1631
SAM...........sam@ aol.com....183882.............3/5/2004.........3/8/2004.............1631
SAM...........sam@ aol.com....183883.............3/5/2004.........3/8/2004.............1631
SAM...........sam@ aol.com....183884.............3/5/2004.........3/8/2004............     1631
SAM...........sam@ aol.com....183886.............3/5/2004.........3/8/2004............     1631
SAM...........sam@ aol.com....183887.............3/5/2004.........3/8/2004............     1631
SAM...........sam@ aol.com....183888.............3/5/2004.........3/8/2004............     1631
PAT...........pat@ aol.com.....291630.............2/23/2007.......7/8/2008............     48
PAT...........pat@ aol.com.....313990.............2/27/2008.......7/28/2008............28
NED...........ned@ aol.com.....190681.............4/4/2006........8/10/2006............746
NED...........ned@ aol.com......95467.............6/14/2006.......11/6/2006............658
NED...........ned@ aol.com......286688.............11/8/2006.......10/3/2007............327
NED...........ned@ aol.com.....291631.............2/23/2007.......8/21/2008............4
NED...........ned@ aol.com.....292111.............3/7/2007.........2/26/2008............181
NED...........ned@ aol.com.....292410.............3/15/2007.......7/22/2008............34
NED...........ned@ aol.com.....299410.............6/27/2007.......2/27/2008............180
NED...........ned@ aol.com.....303790.............9/19/2007.......9/19/2007............341
NED...........ned@ aol.com.....304268.............9/24/2007.......3/3/2008............     175
NED...........ned@ aol.com.....308228.............12/6/2007.......12/6/2007............263
NED...........ned@ aol.com.....316689.............3/19/2008.......3/19/2008............159
NED...........ned@ aol.com.....316789.............3/20/2008.......3/20/2008............158
NED...........ned@ aol.com.....317528.............3/25/2008.......3/25/2008............153
NED...........ned@ aol.com.....321476.............6/4/2008.........6/17/2008............69
NED...........ned@ aol.com.....322160.............7/3/2008.........8/21/2008............4
MOE...........moe@ aol.com.....184169.............4/5/2004.......12/5/2006............629
[email protected]/27/2004.......3/8/2004............1631
How do I incorporate a if else statement in the above cursor so the two days less than 30 days since last update are not returned. I do not want to send email if the project have been updated within the last 30 days.
Edited by: user4653174 on Aug 25, 2008 2:40 PM

analytical functions: http://download-west.oracle.com/docs/cd/B10501_01/server.920/a96540/functions2a.htm#81409
CASE
http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B10501_01/appdev.920/a96624/02_funds.htm#36899
http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B10501_01/appdev.920/a96624/04_struc.htm#5997
Incorporating either of these into your query should assist you in returning the desired results.

I need help with Sunbird Calendar, how can I transfer it from one computer to the other and to my iphone?

I installed Sunbird in one computer and my calendar has all my infos, events, and task that i would like to see on another computer that i just downloaded Sunbird into. Also, is it possible I can access Sunbird on my iphone?
Thank you in advance,

Try the forum here - http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewforum.php?f=46 - for help with Sunbird, this forum is for Firefox support.

Hoping for some help with a very frustrating issue! I have been syncing my iPhone 5s and Outlook 2007 calendar and contacts with iCloud on my PC running Vista. All was well until the events I entered on the phone were showing up in Outlook, but not

Hoping for some help with a very frustrating issue!
I have been syncing calendar and contacts on my iPhone 5 and Outlook 2007 using iCloud 2.1.3 (my PC is running Vista). All was well until the events I entered on the phone were showing up in Outlook, but not the other way around. I’ve tried the usual recommended steps: deselecting calendar and contacts in the iCloud control panel and then re-selecting, signing out of the panel and back in, and repairing the Outlook installation in control panel. I even uninstalled iCloud on the PC and downloaded it again (same version).
The furthest I’ve gotten is step 2 (and once, step 3) of 7 while performing “Outlook Setup For iCloud.” At that point I get, “Your setup couldn’t be started because of an unexpected error.” After the first attempt at all this, all my calendar events disappeared from Outlook, although they are still in iCloud calendar and on my phone.
Sound familiar? Any ideas on how to solve this iCloud/Outlook issue? Thanks much in advance!

Hoping for some help with a very frustrating issue!
I have been syncing calendar and contacts on my iPhone 5 and Outlook 2007 using iCloud 2.1.3 (my PC is running Vista). All was well until the events I entered on the phone were showing up in Outlook, but not the other way around. I’ve tried the usual recommended steps: deselecting calendar and contacts in the iCloud control panel and then re-selecting, signing out of the panel and back in, and repairing the Outlook installation in control panel. I even uninstalled iCloud on the PC and downloaded it again (same version).
The furthest I’ve gotten is step 2 (and once, step 3) of 7 while performing “Outlook Setup For iCloud.” At that point I get, “Your setup couldn’t be started because of an unexpected error.” After the first attempt at all this, all my calendar events disappeared from Outlook, although they are still in iCloud calendar and on my phone.
Sound familiar? Any ideas on how to solve this iCloud/Outlook issue? Thanks much in advance!

Help with Particle Playground Cannon

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for