Learn the little-known secrets of After Effects' Particle Playground plugin with special effects expert & Star macProVideo.com Trainer Richard Lainhart.

The Adobe After Effects Particle Playground plugin is a powerful environment for particle systems & other eye-catching special effects, but few After Effects users even know it's there! And what's more, many of those who do find its interface mysterious and intimidating. Yet Particle Playground is a wonderful environment for all kinds of effects (particularly text effects) that are difficult or impossible to achieve with other tools.

Our Particle Playground expert Richard Lainhart fills you in on the basics of how particle systems work, and how they differ from After Effects' standard keyframing techniques. Richard dives in at the deep end to show you how to create unique particle effects like snow and fountains, before taking you into Particle Playground's incredible particle text effects.

You'll learn cool techniques you can use in your productions, like the ever-popular revealing of a logo from a string of randomized letters, bouncing animated text off a wall with real physics properties, and blowing up selected letters in a line of moving text. You'll also learn how to use image sequences to create run cycles and animated particles. From there, Richard walks you step-by-step through creating the Matrix Code Effect, as featured in the popular Matrix films, and how to customize it for your own title sequences.

Particle systems can be confusing and difficult to understand, but once you complete this tutorial, you'll be well on your way to mastery of the Secrets of Particle Playground.

Table of Contents:

1. Introducing the Secrets of Particle Playground
2. Keyframing vs. Procedural Animation
3. How Particle Systems Work
4. About Property Maps and Simulators
5. Particle Playground Parameters
6. Varying Particle Velocity
7. Varying Particles Per Second
8. Simulating a Fountain - Randomizing Direction
9. Randomizing Velocity
10. Setting the Initial Particle Snow Parameters
11. Refining the Particle Snow Parameters
12. Creating Stylized Snow with a Layer Map - Part 1
13. Creating Stylized Snow with a Layer Map - Part 2
14. Setting Up a Photoshop Sequence as an Animated Laye...
15. Applying the Animated Layer Map
16. Setting Layer Map Time Offsets
17. Relative and Absolute Layer Map Offset Types
18. Setting Up Cannon Text
19. Adjusting Cannon Text Parameters
20. Bouncing Cannon Text off a Wall
21. Using Selection Texts
22. Using Particle Exploder with Cannon Text
23. Using Time Offsets with Particle Exploder
24. Combining Wall with Particle Exploder
25. Property Map Concepts
26. Creating a Simple Property Map
27. Adjusting Property Maps Offsets
28. Scrolling Characters with Property Maps
29. Applying Multiple Property Map Channels
30. Enabling Grid Text
31. Creating Animation Presets
32. Creating a Noise Map to Randomize Properties
33. Randomizing Characters with the Noise Map
34. Introducing the Matrix Code Effect
35. Generating the Text Grid
36. Creating the Random Noise Map
37. Creating the First Gradient Opacity Map
38. Creating Additional Gradient Opacity Maps
39. Animating the First Four Opacity Gradients
40. Adding Additional Opacity Gradients - Part 1
41. Adding Additional Opacity Gradients - Part 2
42. Increasing Animation Density by Duplicating Element...
43. Setting Channels for the Master Property Map
44. Applying the Custom Map to the Particle Playground ...
45. Simulating the Code Effect with Standard Fonts