ParticleAccelerator

About this plugin

Apply ParticleAccelerator to a comp-size solid from Effect > ECScripts: an Emitter and a Particle node come with it, already wired, and particles stream out of the layer. Open the Particle Accelerator panel from the Window menu and dock it anywhere: it shows the layer's nodes as a graph, so you click a node to edit it in Effect Controls, add more with its buttons and drag wires between them. The Emitter says where particles are born: from a Point, inside a Box or a Sphere, or from the layer's masks or text, inside the shapes or along their edges, continuously, in one burst, in order or in a shuffled order, with a controller null to fly it around the comp. The Particle says how they look: Circle, Rectangle, Cloud, Texture (any layer as the sprite), Face, Model (a cube, sphere, cylinder, pyramid or an OBJ file), Faded Sphere or Feathered Sphere, colored from a gradient over their life, along the emitter's path or from the layer's own pixels. Force nodes add gravity, wind, spin and air density; Turbulence nodes stir the particles with fractal or curl noise and can vary their size, color, opacity and rotation; Motion Path nodes send them along the path of a null you animate; Transform nodes move, turn and scale whole systems or have them follow a null; Replica nodes copy them in rows, spirals, grids, over spheres, in winding lines or along a path through the comp's lights; and Auxiliary nodes emit particles from particles, for trails, sparks and fireworks. Faces and models are lit by the comp's lights and seen through its camera, with shadows, ambient occlusion, subsurface scattering, an HDRI, fog, and a layer or a depth image that hides the particles behind it. Motion blur takes real samples of the system, Loop repeats it seamlessly, Time Remapping slows, freezes or reverses it, Render Output gives the Ambient Occlusion, Z Depth, Shadows or Volumetric pass on its own, and Preset: Save keeps a whole system as one animation preset. It renders on the GPU with CUDA or OpenCL on Windows and Metal on macOS, or the same image on all CPU cores, in 8, 16 and 32 bpc, with Multi-Frame Rendering. For After Effects 2022 (22.0) or later, on Windows 10 or 11 and macOS 11 or later, on Apple Silicon and Intel Macs: copy the ten plug-ins into a folder named ECScripts in After Effects' Plug-ins folder and restart After Effects. On a Mac, the README shows the two Terminal commands that let macOS load them.

What it does

• A node-based 3D particle system: native effects and a docked node panel that wires them together
• Emitters: Point, Box, Sphere, or the layer's masks and text, inside the shapes or along their edges
• Emit continuously, in one burst, in order or shuffled, with a controller null to fly the emitter
• Eight particle types: Circle, Rectangle, Cloud, Texture, Face, Model, Faded Sphere and Feathered Sphere
• Models from a cube, sphere, cylinder, pyramid or any OBJ file, and textures from any layer
• Color from a gradient over life, along the emitter's path or from the layer's pixels, with size and opacity over life
• Force nodes: gravity, wind, spin and air density
• Turbulence nodes: fractal or curl noise that swirls the particles and varies their size, color, opacity and rotation
• Motion Path nodes: particles travel the path of a null you animate
• Transform nodes move, turn and scale whole systems; Replica nodes copy them in rows, spirals, grids and spheres
• Auxiliary nodes: particles from particles, for trails, sparks and fireworks
• 3D particles lit by the comp's lights: shadows, ambient occlusion, subsurface scattering, HDRI and fog
• Real motion blur, seamless loops, time remapping, and Ambient Occlusion, Z Depth, Shadows and Volumetric passes
• Save a whole system as one animation preset
• GPU rendering with CUDA or OpenCL on Windows and Metal on macOS, 8, 16 and 32 bpc, and Multi-Frame Rendering