Sparks... Fireflies... Smoke... Rain... Snow... Star fields. Hundreds of  sparkles dancing across the screen. Exactly the kind of visual effects that would cause After Effects SFX artists to contemplate running head first into an oncoming locomotive.   "I hear that train acomin', it's comin' 'round the bend..."-- Johnny Cash

What took Disney animators untold hours to do by hand for Tinkerbell's sparkling trails can now be done with a few Mickey Mouse clicks thanks to Trapcode Particular... and you don't have to the Sorcerer's Apprentice to make it happen! (OK,OK!!  That's the last Disney reference. I promise.)

Red Giant Software is the distributor for Trapcode plug-ins which are created in Stockholm, Sweden by Peder Norrby. (GOOD JOB, PEDER!!!) That's right! One guy created Trapcode Particular (TP) and all the other amazing Trapcode products. Truly incredible that one person can create an industry standard and allow thousands of SFX artists to lead relatively normal lives.

How easy is it to get started, you ask? Just open a composition in After Effects (AE), create a solid layer and apply TP from the effects pull-down menu. There!... you've just created your first particle emitter. Tap the space bar and tiny white particles immediately begin flowing out from the middle of the screen. You've just created a particle animation that would have taken hours to keyframe by hand.

Now comes the fun stuff. Change the emitter  to "Directional", adjust the x-axis on the emitter to 90 degrees and you get particles that rise to the top of the screen.

Open the Physics menu and add in 20% Gravity. Open the Particle menu and change the "Life" of the particles to 5 seconds. Now run the animation and you get something that resembles a water sprinkler with droplets rising up and gently falling to the bottom of the screen. It's just that easy to make a slow-motion sprinkler fountain emitting 100 droplets per second. Want more droplets? More gravity? Random size droplets? Colored droplets? All of it is easily adjustable.

More fun stuff:  At the top of the Effects Control Panel there's a pull-down menu loaded with animation presets. There are enough presets to keep you busy for hours. Create your own preset and add it to the list. The presets are also a good way to reverse engineer the effects to learn how they are put together and adjust them for your own needs.

Here are a few of the presets right out of the box.

Arc Welder

Smoky Explosion

Sparkly Stars

Light Scribbles

Glowing Trailing Embers

Smoke Trails

Trapcode Particular goes for $399.00. It's not cheap, but then neither are the effects it generates. We're talking world-class standard SFX used in many of Hollywood's biggest blockbusters. Sure, you could go out and blow $399 on a new iphone or you could buy TP. For me, this is a lot more fun.

Enjoy!