Is there any way to animate particles using the point emitter, and then track them into a shot WITHOUT pasting them on another layer and losing visual info? I read something in help about “Attatch to emitter” but my particles just consolidate into one particle when I check that. Any ideas? Thanks!
-Mike
create a null object, track that to your camera movement and use quick pick to link your emitter to pos xy of the null.
Hope that helps.
Thanks for your reply. I’m not sure what quick pick is? If you could just elaborate more that would help me.
Does the null object take the place of a layer? I feel like the emitter will be tracked to it but once the particles are born they wont be locked in the shot. Let me know when you can, thanks!
Quick Pick is a kind of expression link. You find the button in the timeline on the right side.
Select the pos x of your emitter, click on quick pick and select pos x of your null object.
Quick pick links them with an equal expression.
Don´t forget to track the null before linking it.
Ok I will try that. Unfortunately I don’t have my system with me because I’m away on vacation. My only hesitation with this method is that by tracking the particle emitter to the node, it will track the emitter itself to the camera moves, but the particles that have already been “born” will not move with the camera movement. Is this possible even while tracking the x/y positions?
Would Maya be a better option for particles/tracking? Would I get a clean alpha if exporting from there? Thanks!
creating particles in a 3d software looks often more realistic than a 2d particle system.
combustion particles are 2d only! Fusion for example has a 3d particle system.
Depending on your shot creating the particles in maya will be some more work than in comp.
If want to a clean integration, I would suggest to load your footage into a 3d tracker like boujou or syntheyes, export the camera to maya and create the particles in that 3d scene.
This process is quite a lot work, you have to decide if makes sense for your shot. budget, time…etc?!
hope that helps.
The shot tracking is very simple, there aren’t any complicated camera moves, just some slow pans. Would I really need those tracking softwares to do it? Could I just export the data from combustion to Maya?
Or if I can’t do that, can’t I just cheat the perspective myself?
Ok, to fake the perspective in combustion there are several options.
this method has some limitations, angles more than 30° will reveal that it is 2d only…
Actually the question I was asking is if I could just cheat the perspective in Maya. The compositing I’m doing is only a panning shot, so it doesn’t require any 3d camera work.
What I’m really getting at is, can I do my particles in Maya and export them to combustion with a clean alpha channel, and end up with a better product than I would using combustion’s particles?
Or, should I just go with fusion. I just feel that the tracking capabilities of particles in combustion are not powerful enough for what I’m doing. If I try and track particles the born particles wont be locked into the shot, and if i put it on a seperate layer, no matter what i do it doesn’t look anywhere NEAR as good as it does on a black background by itself.
rendering the particles out of maya with a clean alpha should work, watch out the premultiplied alpha option. it depends on your comp software which option works best.
I have read several posts that there are some problems with maya and combustion when rendering to iff.
If you want to have all options available go for maya particles. It will look better than combusitons 2d system. I think in Fusion 5 you can do the whole job without using maya.
What kind of particles do you need?
Mainly smoke particles. I need a missile trailing across the sky, in addition to thick black smoke falling down from the sky.
What kind of problems were people having with TIFF? Could it be combustion? Is there another compositing application where I wouldn’t have these problems?
Thanks you’ve been very helpful.
I meant Maya´s IFF format, I have read that there was always a black fringe around the rendered objects. Switching the footage to premultiplied did not helped either.
I would go for shake if you are on a mac, or use Fusion on PC. Both are completly node based and very flexible. I have used combustion since version 1.0. My experience was you can handle a lot of jobs with it, but with bigger composites it is not very fast. Also the schematic view is very limited to some basic functions…
I like the paint operator, the masks workflow and the draw selection operator.
If you are familiar with maya you can work the same way with a node based compositor.
It´s like hypershade…
Okay, so to sum it all up…
-There really is no way to track an animated particle, and lock it into a shot unless you put it on a seperate layer, which yields bad results.
-If you try tracking it straight out of the operator onto a null, the emitter will be tracked but not the “born” particles.
-The only thing I haven’t addressed is “Attach to emitter”. The manual says that if you wanted to do something such as a waterfall you’d select this option so when you track it, the particles won’t move with the tracker but be locked in the shot.
I feel i’ve pretty much exhausted all options. I’ll experiment a little bit more once I’m back on my system, but i’ll probably go with fusion. I still find it odd that combustion has such powerful particle effects, but you can’t do simple things like track them into a shot seamlessly. When you get a chance let me know if I’ve addressed everything so I can just move forth with another comp package. I REALLY appreciate your help, thanks!
Does anyone have any final thoughts on this? Won’t an expression link replace particles that are already animated with keyframes? I need the particles to be moving AND tracked into the shot. Thanks!
Hi,
I’m very new to compositing, and thus combustion, but I was wondering why (and it seems to be agreed upon) putting the particles in a separate layer would create a poor result. I can’t really think of a reason why this would be the case, though I daresay I am overlooking something. If someone could let me know, that’d be great.
Cheers,
Dan
This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.