Overview of Particle Playground workflow (Pro 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 possibilities available in Particle Playground go beyond the obvious. For example, you can replace the default dot particles with the footage from an existing layer and 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.

Using Particle Playground:

1. Select the layer on which you want particles to exist, or create a new solid layer.
2. Choose Effect > Simulation > Particle Playground. The layer becomes an invisible layer in which only the particles are visible. Animating the layer in the Timeline window animates the entire layer of particles.
3. Set up a particle generator to determine how particles are created. You can shoot a stream of particles from the Cannon, generate a flat plane full of particles from the Grid, or use the Layer Exploder to create particles from an existing layer. If you've already created particles, you can apply the Particle Exploder to explode them into more new particles.
4. Select your particles. By default, Particle Playground creates dot particles. You can replace the dots with footage from a layer already in the composition or with text characters you specify.

Note: If you want to use footage from a layer as particles, see Replacing default particles with layers using the Layer Map (Pro only). If you want to use text as particles, see Replacing default particles with text (Pro only).

5. Specify the overall behavior of some or all particles. Use Gravity to pull particles in a specified direction, Repel to push particles apart from or toward one another, or Wall to contain or exclude particles from a certain area.
6. Use an image to specify the behavior of individual particles. You can modify controls that change particle motion, such as speed and force, and controls that change particle appearance, such as color, opacity, and size.

For more information, see Influencing the behavior of existing particles (Pro only), and About Property Mappers (Pro only).


Particle Playground controls 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 takes 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.