After Effects - Particular Problem

#1

I’m kind of stumped with this thing I ran into while working with Particular in AE CS5: I have a layer with Particular applied, using another layer as the source for the particles. They’re arranged in a large grid pattern, with no velocity/gravity/etc. so they’re motionless for the first few seconds. I’m now trying to get them to move and fly out of the frame. For some reason, I can only animate a single attribute in Particular. The first thing I apply keyframes to, in this case, the Z Offset in the World Transform section, works just fine. After that, nothing I apply keyframes to will do what it is supposed to. So here, I need to get the particles moving, so I go to animate the velocity. I can manipulate the velocity slider and see the particles acting as I expect them to, but as soon as I place an actual keyframe, its like nothing is happening at all. The Z offset appears in the RAM preview, and the keys I’ve added to move the velocity from 0 to 100 are there, but the actual particles in the frame don’t do anything.

I figure I must be missing something somewhere, so if anyone has any suggestions, they would be greatly appreciated.

#2

Yes, particles evaluate at the time of birth, so when keyframing they can only inherit the values at that time. Has always been this way and is perfectly logical. And using world transform does what it says - it transforms the “world” including all forces, not the emitter. You have things completely backwards. You need to animate the emitting layer and the velocity.

Mylenium

#3

I think I understand what you’re saying. So, basically, whatever settings are in place when the particles spawn dictates their behavior. I’ve not tried something like this before, so it will be a learning process. Thanks for your input.

#4

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