Trapcode Particular 1.5 Review
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Publisher: Red Giant Software Demo Downloads: Click Here Review Date: December 15, 2006 Reprinted with permission from MicroFilmmaker Magazine Final Score: 9.0 |
After we reviewed Knoll Light Factory Pro with the Spectacular portion that interacts directly with Trapcode Particular last month, we felt it only fitting that we review Particular this month. Plus it also fit in quite nicely with the in-depth look at special effects programs we’ve been doing a lot of recently.
For those of you not familiar with Particular, it is a particle-generation plug-in for After Effects. It allows you to create realistic smoke, fire, snow, 3D grids, warp trails, and even rain. (Though rain isn’t a preset and will take a bit of experimentation to make yourself.) As the program is designed for only one type of visual effect, rather than as a suite, it is inherently simpler to use, but, on the flip side, more limited in its abilities.
With that said, let’s break it down.
Ease of Use
When you first install Particular and it shows up in your After Effects Plug-in folder, most users will be tempted to try and drag and drop it over a video clip. This is where it’s a bit counter-intuitive. You must instead create a solid the size of your work area and apply the plug-in to this. (They include a Quick Start guide which you’ll need to open outside of After Effects to realize this.) Once you’ve done this, you can position explosions, bursts of smoke, or snow fall any place you want.
While you can adjust a multitude of options about all the particles you can generate, what makes this plug-in very easy to get started is 45 custom presets that cover everything from abstract swirls of color to exploding fireworks with smoke trails to warp tunnels to TNT explosions. And to keep you from even having to render each of these to find what you want, there is a preview window that will let you see a small Real-Time version of the effect in 3D space when you click on it. Click with just the left button and you can rotate the effect in 3D space. Press the Shift Key and Left Click and you can drag the effect anywhere on the screen. Unfortunately, you can’t hot-swap these keys to, say, drag an explosion to the right side of the screen and then release the key to rotate. While it’s a minor inconvenience to not be able to do both, the ability to do either so simply makes deciding on effect before you utilize it ultra simple.
Depth of Options
While the range of options is limited to particle generation with this plug-in, the amount of control you have over these particles is pretty mind-blowing. You can choose to tweak any of the six large categories of: Emitter, Particle, Physics, Aux System, Visibility, and Motion Blur. Emitter determines shape and location of the emitter, as well as how many particles and in what direction they go. Particle determines the type of particle, the life expectancy, and the coloration of the particles. Physics determine the type of environment the effect is happening in, such as if there is gravity, if there is wind resistance, and if the particles might be only in the air or if they might bounce off of 3D surfaces. Aux Systems control sub-particles that come off of main particles, which are especially useful in things like smoke and fire. Visibility controls vanishing points, obscuration levels, general opacity, and the new Depth of Field function. Finally, Motion Blur allows you to blend your effect with your camera shots and allows you to disregard certain elements that may conflict with your render.
While these options will obviously require a lot of tweaking for most users, they provide a lot of control for more experienced users to get the most out of this product. Plus, as mentioned before, this works nicely with lens flares generated with Knoll Light Factory, either as an accent or through the Spectacular module which causes gleams and flares to reflect across each particle generated in Particular.
Performance
The performance on this software was very good. The previews can be tweaked to show basic geometry, full renders, or even full renders with depth of field, depending on your needs and the power of your computer. Even slower machines with 512 MBs of RAM will find full renders on the previews to be pretty smooth, if a shade slower than Real Time. For folks with quad-processor machines, a gig or two of RAM, and an accelerator like GridIron’s Nucleo Pro (check out the review we did of that in this issue), you won’t quite make Real Time rendering, but you’ll come close to a 3:1 ratio on a single effect. On our older machine with 2 GHz Single P4 and 512 MB of RAM, a single effect came to a 14.4:1 ratio, which is pretty good. (Four simultaneous effects are going to come close to 9:1 for the aforementioned quad setup and 39:1 for the older setup.)
Value
While $299 is very reasonable for the type of quality you get with this plugin, I would like to see it lowered to a $199 price point due to the fact that it is solely a particle generation program. Of course, now that Red Giant is distributing Trapcode’s software, it would be even better to see it combined with Knoll Light Factory Pro, Magic Bullet Editors, and a basic version Primatte Keyer software for a total visual effects plug-in package around $600.
Final Comments
With silky smooth particle generation, a great preview ability, and the ability to interface with Knoll Light Factor, Particular is turning a lot of heads. If you need to add some high quality particle effects to your films or if you would like to add some splash to credits, then you really owe it yourself to download the demo of this program and see if it wouldn’t work well for you.
