Red Giant QuickTip #25: Aligning Particular Motion Paths

Motion paths in Particular can be tricky. Harry Frank brings you this overview of how to set them up, and a foolproof way to align the spline in 3D space with a simple expression.

Expressions used in this tutorial:

Particular Emitter Position XY:

pos = thisComp.layer("Motion Path 1").position.valueAtTime(0);

[pos[0], pos[1]]

Particular Emitter Position Z:

thisComp.layer("Motion Path 1").position.valueAtTime(0)[2]

You can also use THIS PRESET Harry created for AE CS4+, to use (with a try/catch thing so it doesn’t error.)

Learn more about Trapcode Particular HERE.

Hey folks – We just wanted to take a moment to thank Lloyd Alvarez over at AEscripts.com for his help recently. We ran into a problem where our Guru Preset Packs were not working properly in non-English versions of After Effects. Lloyd came up with an ingenious way to convert all of the expressions with effect references for other languages. Lloyd has released this awesome ExpressionUniversalizer script to the public. I’ll let him explain:

This script will convert the expressions in your projects so that they are compatible with After Effects running in any language. If you are an After Effects template author or create projects for international clients you’ve certainly ran into the situation where your expressions break on your client’s machine. This is where ExpressionUniversalizer will come the rescue! Just run the script on your projects before you post or send them and they will be guaranteed to work!

It’s very easy to use, simply choose whether you want to process the current comp or all the comps in your project and click on the Universalize Expressions button. That’s it. There is an option to create a log file in case you want a detailed record of what is being converted or if you run into any trouble.

The script can universalize expressions written in these languages: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Japanese. If you would like your language added please get in touch. This is only to support what language the expression is originally written in, once the project has been universalized it can be open by ANY language.

There’s a nice geeky explanation of how it all works on Lloyd’s site, where you can also get the script, as well as many other great tools to make life easier in After Effects.

Alright folks -

Here’s another tutorial I’ve been wanting to do for a while. I see people struggling with Particular’s emitter position controls, so I figured I’d pass a long a few things that will make your life easier…

WARNING: Objects in tutorial image are a lot more interesting than they appear!

So, in this Episode, we’ll look at some very useful techniques for Trapcode Particular that will give you better control of emitter position in 2D and 3D. You’ll also learn how to capture the motion of your mouse (or stylus) to control emitter position.

You can watch it here.