generating flock of birds - particular?
by turnesol
on
Nov 5, 2007 at 10:52:33 pm
I am try to produce a motion piece that features an overwhelming swarm of birds. I came across a video looks like Particular was used. Since Particular does not support custom particles with embedded motion, I am stumped. Can anyone help me? Thanks.
The video can be found at http://www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup/settings/seasons/spring/2945079_butterflies_hd_alpha_loop.php?id=2945079
Re: generating flock of birds - particular? by A.Zander on Nov 6, 2007 at 6:34:38 pm
more spicificly what you want to do is either pre comp, or to save render time pre render your bird animation. Than bring it in use it as a custom particle map and make sure your are sampling the entire animation and using a loop. Than you will have each bird represented as a particle (or other way around) what you than want to do is get your PPS up to say 30 for 1 second, and than set it to 0, have your life be longer than your comp, and animate away.
Re: generating flock of birds - particular? by Darby Edelen on Nov 9, 2007 at 4:45:16 pm
[A.Zander]"Than you will have each bird represented as a particle (or other way around) what you than want to do is get your PPS up to say 30 for 1 second, and than set it to 0, have your life be longer than your comp, and animate away."
In the 'options' dialog you can also set Pre-Run to 100% so that there is no period where birds are 'emitting' or appearing on screen.
Darby Edelen Designer Left Coast Digital Santa Cruz, CA
Re: generating flock of birds - particular? by Darby Edelen on Nov 9, 2007 at 4:43:17 pm
[turnesol]"Since Particular does not support custom particles with embedded motion, I am stumped. Can anyone help me?"
Whaaaaat? Then how did I do my flock of birds with it? =O
Just make your bird in a pre-comp animating in a loop, a 'flap-cycle' we'll call it =)
Drop this pre-comp into your final comp, apply Particular to a layer and set it to use a Custom Particle, choose your bird 'flap-cycle' pre-comp and set it to begin on a random frame for each particle and loop.
Now tweak your settings to resemble a flock of particles.
I believe you can even enable Collapse Transformations on your custom particle layer, although Particular might have some minor issues with it.
Darby Edelen Designer Left Coast Digital Santa Cruz, CA
