Trapcode Particular V2

Trapcode Particular V2 is now available! Without a doubt one of the most essential and widely used plugins for After Effects, this new version brings its share of new features!

Here’s the promo video, presented by Mr. Aharon Rabinowitz for RedgiantTV:

Aharon Rabinowitz
Trapcode Particular V2

• Particles are now shaded and interact with After Effects’ lights — and that’s fantastic news! In fact, for me, it’s THE best news. Combined with depth of field and motion blur, it will now be possible to achieve even more realistic behaviors.
• 3D Rotation of particles! You can now control the orientation of particles in 3D space, with the option to use auto-orientation based on movement. And of course, as always, you have ‘random’ parameters here too for more or less independent and random rotations for each particle.
• If you’ve got a powerful machine, you can now try emitting 1 million particles per second, all with 128 lights (plus a bit of motion blur + DOF) ;)
• You can now transform the entire particle world (which can simplify many things — for example, rotating all particles without moving the camera).
• The physics simulation engine has been redesigned, optimized for multi-core processors, rendering times are faster, and it now supports 32bpc. And even though it’s less “wow,” these optimizations are just as important as the new features. If only After Effects’ own engine could use a bit of that optimization magic — especially when dealing with high resolutions…
• Backward Compatibility: old projects using Particular will still work, and will benefit from faster render times and new functionalities.
• Presets have also been reworked for HD.

You can purchase the new version of the plugin on Red Giant’s website ($399 or $99 for an upgrade). You can also install the demo version to see for yourself.

While waiting for me to make a little tutorial using all these new features, why not check out Maltaannon’s latest tutorial on his site, or Aharon’s 20-minute presentation (+ 20-minute tutorial) at AENY:

Get your credit cards ready, fire up your comps, and have a great start to the week!