Overview of Particular Interface

Technical Notes for Trapcode Particular 2.0

This page lists the new and improved features in Particular 2.0. If you are familiar with Particular 1.0 or 1.5, we hope you will be pleased with the user-requested features that we added in.

Custom Particle layer doesn't have to start at Frame 0

The custom particle layer no longer has to start at same frame as Particular. This refers to use of a source layer for the Sprite and Textured Polygon types.

In version 1.5, you had to start the Layer Source at 0. Otherwise, a blank frame would show. The old behavior often led to flickering, because the custom particle layer was offset just one or two frames and you really could not see the misalignment unless zooming far into the Timeline. Note that the custom particle layer/pre-comp still needs to have the SAME FRAME RATE as the Particular comp for predictable behavior.

Now layers used for Sprites or Textures can start at any point on the Timeline. The layers do not have to be aligned in time. Please note: Animation Presets still must be applied to the first frame of the Timeline.

Composition & Layout changes

- There is no longer a Preview Window. The Preview was a way to preview Particular thumbnail animations and get a feel of the physics in real time. This feature confused users, so we removed it.
- Always use a composition-sized Solid if you are applying Particular to a Solid layer. Solids of other sizes may result in a cropped appearance.
- With the addition of Transfer Modes, you can apply Particular to other media layers, such as video footage. This is useful for stacking multiple instances of an effect on one layer. Also useful for applying particles to footage or other effects.

Performance Optimizations

- The render engine for Particular 2 is now multi-threaded for much greater interactive rendering speed on multi-core machines. While we have added many new render-intensive features, you will find that the render time has not been adversely affected. Threading now divides the computational load onto the existing cores to make the effect render faster.
- Countless other small bugs and performance improvements have been made. For instance, a cause of flickering in Particular 1.5 was a bug with the Texture group> Time Sampling> Split-Clip Loop and Random - Loop. These have now been fixed.
- Increased maximum particle limit now allows quick bursts of 1 million particles per second. Emitting a million particles/second continuously is NOT recommended! The plug-in and After Effects can quickly eat all the application memory on your system. Use this super high value carefully.
- Float allows super-bright (luminant) particles — this looks great with motion blur, for example. Particular v2 has a complete float implementation, so all colors, including the custom color gradient UI, support 32-bpc float. A must-have if you use float compositing seriously.
- The new Ortho rendering support enables viewing a scene from many directions (front, top, left) at the same time. Very helpful when setting up complex 3D animations. A camera must exist in the comp for this option to work (Layer>New>Camera).

Compatible with Particular 1.0/1.5 projects

Particular 2.0 can load projects made in Particular 1.5 and convert them to 2.0 projects. Doing this will display a warning. Note that the new renderer is not pixel-perfectly identical with the old, so it is a good idea to save your new project with a new name, in case you need to go back to using the old one. Also, do not install both Particular version 1.5 and version 2.0 on machines in the same render farm, or errors may result.

You can open a Particular 1.0 or 1.5 project in Particular 2.0. You will get a standard After Effects message that says the project will be converted and needs to be re-saved. Any old project file that contains the Smokelet Particle Type will be automatically converted to use Cloudlet+Shadowlet settings.