Wondertouch particleIllusion 3.0 (part 1)

Flash and special effects

If you want to create special effects for Flash you can either choose vector graphics or bitmaps. The beauty of vector graphics resides in the size of the final project but it will be a lot more time consuming if you want to achieve the same visual result that you would with bitmaps.

Size matters, especially when you are creating content for the web but since the bandwith available to users is increasing very quickly it is less of an issue that it would have been a couple of years ago. If you are creating content for CD-rom or for desktop applications well lucky you, size is not an issue in that case. So for now let's forget about vector graphics and let's concentrate on bitmaps and more precisely on bitmap sequences.

So what software can you use to create visual effects for Flash?

1. You can choose to use a good 3D package like 3D studion Max, Cinema 4D or Lightwave, not a bad idea at all and results are generally impressive but many people will be turned down by the steepy learning curve.
2. If you are a Photoshop master you can fiddle with some plugins and create a bitmap sequence that you can import into Flash
This is a viable solution but you will need to create each image of the sequence separately. Also you will have difficulty to create more advanced effects like animated water, fire, complex animated particle effects...etc
3. Adobe After effects is a software dedicated to special effects but again if you are new to that field you will find that the learning curve is again quite steepy.
4. Or you can use a little software that I discovered some time ago, particleIllusion v3.0 created by Wondertouch

particleIllusion v3.0

particleIllusion v3.0 is a little piece of software dedicated to the creation of particles effects like fire, light, sparks, water, smoke and the possibilities are endless since all parameters can be adjusted.

ParticleIllusion is a standalone application that uses OpenGL hardware acceleration to give you real-time feedback on all changes you make. The application also seems to be particularly well programmed and make clever use of the system memory since it runs very smoothly on a medium machine.

I have to say that my first impression when I started the
demo was "wow", the quality of the effects is just stunning, the single
library that installs with the demo contains enough emitters to give you a
solid idea of that software is able to produce, but you can also load any of
the other dozens of libraries (over 1900 emitters!) into the demo too --
download them from the wondertouch site.

I am not going to give you a vast description of the interface since the manual included with the demo does it in details. The interface is composed of a layer panel (section 1 on the picture), a hierarchy window (section 2) where you can control the different parameters of your effect, the stage (section 3), the timeline (section 4), the preview panel (section 5) and the library(section 6).

The interface is pretty simple and that is surely a bonus since what we are not looking to spend a week learning the basics like it is often the case with dedicated 3d softwares or other video dedicated programs.

What we really are interested here as Flash usersis not just the quality and the amount of special effects we can create but how long it takes to create a nice special effect? is there a long learning curve? how do we import the final result in Flash? how does it affect the file size? Well you will be glad to know that I will give you some answers to those questions since I have been playing with the demo for a while.

Theory and marketing arguments are one thing, practical use is another. So let's see if particleIllusion can be useful to us Flash users.

The Flash project

My initial though is to create a gentle sparkly effect on a flashvalley design, I want the particles to be moving a bit randomly , not too fast and to be quite smal.

Like all good things special effects need to be applied in moderation or you could quickly move from great to crap. In one word I want something elegant, so here we go since I can feel you are getting impatient let's jump into the action, continue to next page...