78

Technique
  

After Effects CS3 or later

Create
light trail
effects
Wyld Stallyons’ Chris
Sayer and James Wignall
shed light on the creation
of illuminated trails
using After Effects and
Trapcode Particular
From Apple’s silhouette iPod adverts to the Tron
sequel, everybody loves light streaks and, thanks to After
Effects, they’re pretty easy to create using the Trapcode
Particular plug-in, the fully working demo version of which is on
this issue’s CD.
After Effects ships with CC Particle World, which is a
decent enough 3D particle generator but it doesn’t have the
flexibility or power of Trapcode’s plug-in, which is one of the best
particle systems on any platform, not just After Effects. Most
particle systems work in broadly the same way: an emitter in 3D
space ejects particles and subjects those particles to a variety of
forces, such as gravity and air turbulence. The user can control the
type of particle, its velocity, rotation, spawn rate, degree of
randomness and more. This often produces ‘fuzzy phenomena’
such as fire, smoke, meteor tails, and more abstract imagery such
as light trails. The number of options in Particular can be daunting,
but most controls are obvious or have real-world correlations. By
experimenting, you’ll soon get the hang of this amazing plug-in.

James Wignall and worked with the likes Time needed

Chris Sayer of MTV, Sony and 1 hour
Both directors/ Nickelodeon. See
animators at Wyld more at www.
Stallyons, Chris and wyldstallyons.com Skills
James have a wealth and www.mutant Basic Trapcode
of notable work and hands.com Particular
clients under their Linking
belts. Chris was On the disc movement with
Director of The files for this expressions
Animation on BBC tutorial can be Pre-comping
funded The Snow located at
Queen. James, as DiscContents\
Mutanthands, has Resources\Light

Computer Arts July 2009 www.computerarts.co.uk

ART163.tut_ae 78 13/5/09 15:07:51

 On the disc
Find your fully-wo
Trapcode Particu
rking
lar
on this issue’s dis Demo
c
01 In After Effects, we create a new composition (Ctrl/Cmd+N) and name it
‘Render’. Double-click the composition and add a camera into the scene (Layer>New
Camera). Select ‘35mm’ from the Preset menu.
02 Now we make a new solid
(Layer>New Solid) and call it ‘Particular’.
Add the Trapcode Particular (the demo’s
on the CD) effect to the layer you’ve just
created (Effects>Trapcode>Particular).
04 Once you have finished
playing with the Fractal Noise settings
to get something similar to the
screen-grab above, drag the ‘Particle’
composition into the ‘Render’
composition (this is also known as
pre-comping). Create a null object
(Layer>New>Null Object), name it
‘Movement’, and make it a 3D layer by
checking the 3D cube box.
www.computerarts.co.uk Computer Arts July 2009
ART163.tut_ae 79
79
03 Now we add another new
composition (Ctrl/Cmd+N) at
100x100px and call it ‘Particle’. Also, add
a new solid (Ctrl/Cmd +Y) and apply
Fractal Noise (Effects>Noise & Grain>
Fractal Noise). Next, we create another
white solid (Ctrl/Cmd+Y) under the one
we’ve just created, and set the TrkMat
to ‘LumaMatte’.
05 Next we click on the ‘Particle’
layer and open Particular’s settings (E).
We change ‘Time Sampling’ to ‘Random-
Still Frame’, set Size to 25 and Opacity to
35, and place Opacity over Life. Under
Emitter, change the Particles/sec to 500
and Emitter Type to ‘Point’. Alt/Opt+click
both position layers to add an
expression, and with the Pick Whip
select the Movement position.
13/5/09 15:07:53
 80 Technique

VisualguCideVto
In pictures: a
rk of
the career and wo
r Te ch niq ue wr iters
ou

06 Okay, let’s see how it’s
shaping up! Click on your Movement
layer, then click the little stopwatch next
to Position to add a keyframe. Scrub
along the timeline a second or two, then
move the box to add another keyframe.
How is it looking?
Wyld
Stallyons
Work by both the studio
and Mutanthands
07 In order to get a nice trail, we’ll need to tweak the
Physics settings. It can take a while before you get the right
combination of settings to achieve the look you’re after. We
found the best way of getting that nice, wavey look was by
playing with the Turbulence Field options, such as Affect Size
and Affect Position.
Established & Sons ads – July 2007
Created by Mutanthands while at
Mainframe. “We could do whatever we
liked as long as it linked back to the
product somehow,” Wignall recalls.

UK Jewish Film
Festival trailer
– October 2008
Wyld Stallyons
wrote, designed
and animated this trailer for the festival,
which was shown in London cinemas
given an enthusiastic reception at its
premier in Leicester Square.
09 If you need the trail to be longer, you can
adjust the Life[Sec] option, under Particle. Now all
that’s left to do is animate the Movement layer and
play with a camera (Layer>New>Camera) to make it
all feel dynamic and energetic!

The perfect finish

08 You can change the colour of the
streaks by clicking the Color box under the Particle
settings. To get nice white highlights, you will need
to change the Blending Mode to ‘Add’ from the
drop-down menu.
Once you’ve finished the legwork of
animating your project, there are a few small
things you can do to help seal the deal. Add some
adjustment layers for a bit of noise (Filter>Noise &
Grain), add a vignette or, if you’re feeling
adventurous, a bit of colour correction!
Five ident – October 2008
DixonBaxi briefed Wyld Stallyons to create
an ident for Five’s rebrand. Given free reign,
the Wyld Stallyons team were inspired by
‘80s video artist Zbigniew Rybczy.

10 You can use The Blizzards video

this tutorial as a
foundation, applying it
to your own projects
and ideas. It can be
used to write on text in a
fun and stylish way, to
trail lights to cars or, as
in our case, to pay
homage to Tron! Above
all else, the most
important thing is to
just have fun with it.
– November 2008
For this music video
for Irish band The
Blizzards, Wyld
Stallyons combined backgrounds built in
Cinema 4D with characters animated in
After Effects.
‘Tranquillity’
– January 2009
A Mutanthands
contribution to
Psst! Pass It On. “I decided to do something
I’ve always wanted to do – anime!” says
Wignall. “It was a good excuse to do an
Akira-style dome explosion!”

Computer Arts July 2009 www.computerarts.co.uk

ART163.tut_ae 80 13/5/09 15:07:56