CC ParticleWorld won't render
by Eric Davis
on
Jun 27, 2008 at 9:16:12 pm
I'm currently working on a simple lower 3rd using After Effects 7.0 Pro. One of my layers is a solid with the CC Particle World effect added to create some floating star particles.
The particles are visible in the active camera and show up in a RAM preview, but once it's added to the render queue and After Effects begins to render them, they disappear. The most frustrating part is that once I see they're not visible I'll hit the stop key and, sure enough, as soon as it stops rendering the particles appear again.
I absolutely cannot figure out why this is happening. The layer is visible, the shy button is not selected, and the opacity setting is where it should be.
The previous user of my computer had installed After Effects 7.0, but did not install any of the plug-ins. I recently added CC ParticleWorld (as well as the others included with the professional version) and this is the first time I've really used it. Could it be a registration issue? I've tried to see if there was a way to register the plug-in through After Effects, but couldn't find anything. Anyone have any thoughts that might help?
Please let me know if you need any additional information. Thanks.
Re: CC ParticleWorld won't render by Eric Davis on Jun 29, 2008 at 5:41:30 pm
I get nothing at all from the CC ParticleWorld layer. If I remove the effect, I get solid again, which will show up in the final render. I tried moving the layer up, but that didn't seem to help. When I get back to my computer on Monday, I'll give the Open GL thing a shot.
Re: CC ParticleWorld won't render by Eric Davis on Jun 30, 2008 at 9:31:24 pm
Sorry Jens, I guess I misread your message the first time. No, sadly, the layer is not a guide layer. I really hope that the problem ends up being something simple like that. Thanks for the comment though.
Re: CC ParticleWorld won't render by Eric Davis on Jul 1, 2008 at 5:51:31 pm
Here is the text from a follow up email that Jens Enqvist at Cycore Systems sent me which solves the issue I was having. Of course, the problem was, to a large degree, user error. I wanted to post this message to make sure this thread had some closure for those who may encouter the same problem in the future:
Hi Eric,
I am sure I have found the problem now.
The composition was set to Front camera instead of Active camera. This means that you get a different view in the composition window compared to what you render out.
Unfortunately this is not the only problem. After Effects "orthographic" cameras (Front, Top, Left, etc.) use a matrix which Particle World can not interpret correctly. It is a known bug (we are not the only developers having trouble with this!) but we are looking into solving this. Until then, avoid using the built in camera views I mentioned. This includes for example the 4 view option. It won't cause any problem as long as you do not try to set up an animation using those views. To set up a particle animation you really must use a composition camera (one that you created) and make sure that your composition is set to Active camera.
I was just about to claim that this is mentioned in the manual when I found out it appears to be missing there. We will naturally add an entry regarding this.
