Overview of Particle Playground workflow (PB only)Start by creating a stream or plane of particles, or by "exploding" an existing layer into particles. Once you have a layer of particles, you can control their properties, such as speed, size, and color. However, the effects available in Particle Playground go beyond the obvious. For example, you can replace the default dot particles with the footage from an existing layer, which is how you create an entire snowstorm from a single snowflake layer. You can also use text characters as particles. For example, you can shoot words across the screen, or you can create a sea of text in which a few letters change color, revealing a message. General workflow for creating particle effects:
![]() Particle Playground properties A. Use to generate particles. B. Use to specify footage from a layer in place of each default dot particle. C. Use to influence overall particle behavior. D. Use to influence particle properties. E. Use to set options, including those for substituting text characters in place of dots. The Particle Playground effect renders with anti-aliasing when the layer to which it is applied is set to Best Quality. It also applies motion blur to moving particles when both the Motion Blur switch and the Enable Motion Blur option are enabled. When you use Best Quality and motion blur, the layer will take longer to render. When you use another layer as a source for particles, Particle Playground ignores any property or keyframe changes you made to that layer within that composition, such as changing the Position values. Instead it uses the layer in its original state. To keep property or keyframe changes for a layer when you use it as a particle source, precompose the layer. |