particleIllusion 3.0

particleIllusion is a standalone application that allows you to quickly and easily create amazing effects: explosions, smoke, fire, sparkles, motion graphics backgrounds, space effects, creatures, and abstract artistic effects -- literally hundreds of different types of effects.

particleIllusion 3.0 is our fully-featured professional version. It uses the latest version of our particle engine, and can create the largest number of effects, with amazing realism and complexity.

The Interface

particleIllusion's interface has been highly praised as easy to learn, work with, and master.

We've done our best to create an interface that will be easy for an artist to use, yet not be so "artistic" that it is completely different from anything you've seen before. Our customers seem to feel that we've gotten it right.

Fast, Easy, and Powerful

• Fast: particleIllusion uses OpenGL for real-time (or near real-time) previews of all effects, and ultra-fast rendering. Render times are always in Frames per second, not seconds (or minutes, or hours) per frame.
• Easy: You can add an effect to your project with a single click of the mouse, or you can customize the effect by changing some of the easy-to-understand parameters (such as "size").
• Powerful: The number of parameters that you can change, coupled with some of the advanced features such as "Super Emitters" (particle emitters that create other particle emitters automatically), allow some of the most complex and realistic effects available anywhere.

Out-of-the-Box Effects

One of the great strengths of particleIllusion is the huge library of effects that is included. Over 1500 particle emitters ("effects") are currently available, with a new free library released every month.

What types of effects are included? Too many to list, and many that would be nearly impossible to describe with words, but a few include: explosions, fire, smoke, fog, waterfalls, sparks, sparkles, fireworks, rain, snow, puddle splashes, motion graphics backgrounds, magic effects, space warps, abstract lights, lava, flocks of birds, geometric shapes, aurora, bubbles, waves, rainbows, light beams -- dozens of different types, and hundreds of variations.

This large (and ever-growing) library of effects allows you to create immediately, with no learning curve and almost no effort. You can also customize these effects to create subtle variations or entirely new effects, then save your new presets.

Works with All Video Applications

Since particleIllusion is a standalone application, you can use it with any video editing or compositing software. Bring your movies or image sequences into particleIllusion, add the particle effects you want, then save the output movie or image sequence. You can also save just the particles with an alpha channel (transparency) so the rendered output can be loaded back into your compositing software.

What you can do with particleIllusion 3.0

particleIllusion is so versatile, you'll find many uses for it. Here are a few of the things you can do with particleIllusion 3.0:

Add Effects to Video or Images

From feature film to home video, Adding effects to existing footage (movies or images) is the most common use of particleIllusion. Load your footage, select effects from the existing libraries of over 1500 emitters, adjust any parameters to customize (if needed), then render.

Create Motion Graphics Elements

If you do motion graphics work, particleIllusion is an amazing source of artistic elements for your compositions. There are literally hundreds of different abstract emitters that you can combine in countless ways, and you can always customize the effects in any way needed, for an endless supply of elements.

Build Custom Animated Backgrounds

If you ever use pre-rendered artistic footage collections for backgrounds, why not use particleIllusion instead? There are dozens of existing emitters that were designed for backgrounds, and many, many more that can be used that way as well. Each are completely customizable, so you can create fresh looks with very little effort -- no more being stuck with what the footage collection contains.

Distort Video or Images

particleIllusion particles have the ability to grab colors from background footage, resulting in many different types of effects that typically require other types of applications, filters, or plug-ins. Simulate water ripples, blurs, artistic brushstrokes, mosaics -- even "disintegrate" people and objects (an advanced technique that requires a little more work than other effects). Another great use for the powerful particleIllusion 3.0 engine!

Create Art (and Have Fun!)

particleIllusion 3.0 is so easy to use, and provides so many beautiful emitters (effects), that it's a great creative tool. Don't have any video clips that need effects added? Don't do motion graphics work? Just use particleIllusion to create art! One of the most common comments we hear from customers is that creating and modifying emitters is a lot of fun -- when is the last time you said that about using a graphics application?

How to Use particleIllusion 3.0

Step 1: Load your Video or Images (optional)

Most users want to use particleIllusion to add effects to footage (movies or images), and you can simply do this in a couple of ways. The easiest is to double-click the empty layer thumbnail, then select your movie or image. 

Step 2: Select the Particle Emitters and Add Them

Select a particle emitter (effect) by clicking on it in the library window and you'll see the emitter animated in the preview window. Then just click in the stage window to add the emitter to your project. If the emitter you want is not in the library window, there are several ways to load another of the dozens of libraries that are included with particleIllusion 3.0.

Step 3: Adjust Emitter Position (optional)

The emitter will be placed where you clicked in the stage, but you can easily reposition it by dragging it where you want it. You can keyframe its position to make it move over time, and you can even "draw" its movement as it plays.

Step 4: Adjust Emitter Parameters (optional)

There are so many (over 1500) emitters available so you'll probably be able to find an effect you like, but what if you want to "tweak" the effect a bit? Changes to the emitter are simple. Want more particles? Choose the "number" property in the hierarchy and then adjust its values in the graph window. Want the particles to move faster? Select "velocity" and increase its value. There are dozens of simple parameters (depending on the complexity of the emitter) for you to adjust this way, and you can make more "extreme" changes by opening the emitter properties dialog. Here you can make changes to the particle colors, and even the image used for the particles.

Step 5: Render

As you're perfecting your project, you can see the changes immediately in the stage window -- there is no waiting for a re-render. Hit the spacebar to play your project (usually in near real-time), and saving this output as a movie or image sequence is just a matter of hitting the "save output" button and selecting an output format. If you've loaded footage, you can turn it off and save an alpha channel for the particles for easy overlay in your video editing or compositing application (just choose a format that supports alpha channel and check the "save alpha" option).