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Provides: Particle effects generation

Format: Download

Developer: Wondertouch

Minimum Requirements: Mac OS X v10.2.8, 800MHz G4, 256MB RAM, 1024 x 768 monitor resolution, graphics acceleration with OpenGL support

Review Computer: 2GHz 20" iMac G5, Mac OS X v10.4.3, 1GB RAM, 128MB ATI Radeon 9600

Retail Price: Full version - $399; upgrade from particleIllusion SE - $289; 50% discount available to schools, teachers and students

Availability: Out now

Version Reviewed: 3.0.1

Do you know what the main problems are with particleIllusion? Two things:

1. It should be called Particle Illusion. Note the capitalization and proper separation of words. I mean, am I the only one tired of companies who abandon the rules of grammar in an attempt to make their software titles more interesting?
2. I can't say or read particleIllusion without getting They Might Be Giants' "Particle Man" stuck in my head.

Do you know what the great thing is about particleIllusion? Pretty much everything else.

Remember Kai's Power Goo? It was a graphics program that pretty much allowed you to smoosh up people's faces. In every review I read, every example I saw, that's all people were doing with it; importing photos of faces and distorting them in funhouse mirror ways. It was completely impractical, but fun to use. particleIllusion, on the other hand, is just as fun to use, but is also extremely practical. The fun stems from the ease of use while still obtaining very impressive results. The practicality is the result of the ability to get your impressive results into your Final Cut, Motion or even iMovie projects.

Before I get into that, though, I should explain that particleIllusion v3 is a 2D particle generation system. Particle systems quickly produce effects that can be quite complex, but still easy to control. You don't get the control and high-end results of 3D rendering programs, but that's the point. particleIllusion isn't for created video, it's for adding cool effects to that video in a quick, easy fashion. It does this using emitters, which produce the effects, and the elements that the emitters, well, emit. By choosing and placing the emitters, you produce animated effects that can stand on their own or, most importantly, be composited with your existing footage (see examples).

A feature new to v3 is the super emitter. I'll let Wondertouch define these, because I don't think I can do it on my own:

A super emitter contains one or more emitter types. Each emitter type is a collection of properties that determine how free emitters of this type move, and how they emit particles. Each emitter type is made up of one or more particle types. A super emitter creates free emitters based on the settings in its emitter type, these free emitters create particles based on the settings of their particle types, and these particles combine to form the visual effect. Super emitters and free emitters are not visible—only particles are visible.

Make sense? It may help to think of emitters as fireworks. The shell is the emitter, and it shoots out particles when it explodes. But, imagine if it shot out more shells instead of particles. Those extra shells would be the free emitters, and the particles from those would be the effect. If it still doesn't make sense, just look at it this way; if emitters are the fireworks that makes everyone go, "Oooooohhhhhhh," then super emitters are the ones that make them applaud.

particleIllusion comes with a good number of emitters to get you started. They don't just leave you with those, though. Every month since June 2003 (the PC version has been out for a while now), they've released a new v3 compatible library of emitters available for free download from their website. How's that for being dedicated to their product and to their user base?

Because particleIllusion is a standalone program, you're forced to export your video project (or graphic images if you have a static background) from your main editing program. particleIllusion reads QuickTime movies, so that's not a major problem, but I'd happier if it could also read DV files. And although you can set the start and end frame for your effects, I recommend you export only the portion of your movie that requires the change, create and render the effect in particleIllusion, then bring it back into your movie editing program. Considering this will be a standard practice for many Macintosh users, I found the process under-documented in the particleIllusion HTML manual (there is no printed manual or PDF). Hopefully, a full tutorial for this process will soon be posted at the Wondertouch website. There are some good ones there currently, but most are for previous versions of the software. There's also an online forum, and some of those who write the tutorials moderate the forums, so it's possible to get a personal tutorial in there.

Normally, I hate working in standalone programs to simply add effects to outside projects (see Photoshop plug-ins: AutoFX). On the other hand, many of the third-party filters and effects available for iMovie, for example, are extremely difficult to control because they're stuck with iMovie's interface. I'm happy (and somewhat surprised) to report that the particleIllusion interface is not only easy to navigate, but easy to learn. On the upper left is a layer window that allows you to add, delete and arrange the various layers of your project. Below that is the hierarchy window in which you control the various aspects of the elements on your layers. I'm not sure these two areas need to be separated, but I was comfortable working this way. The main area then is the stage window where you'll see all the elements of your project come together. Directly below that is the timeline, or graph window, which I'll come back to in a moment. On the upper right is the preview window where you can see animated samples of the emitters, and directly below that is the library of currently installed emitters. You can resize each of these windows by dragging their dividers, which made life quite a bit better on my 20" iMac. Although you have to do it element by element, you can save different layout commands for easy access later.

Focusing on the timeline for a moment, I just want to say it's probably the easiest I've worked with. You can easily end up with hundreds of elements in the hierarchy window, which would make finding the exact element you want to edit quite difficult. However, you don't see all the elements in the timeline, just the one you have selected. As a result, editing is a breeze. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find a way to display all elements in the graph window if I needed to. I'd like to be able to do that, and if I click on an element there, it would become highlighted in the hierarchy window.

Now, there are many more features available in particleIllusion 3, meaning many more steps to the process. It's too much to cover in this review, but you can get a better feel for all of this by downloading the demo. It's heavily limited in the number of available emitters and in that any saved video will have a watermark, but it's worth your time in that you really need to see how particleIllusion works and what it can produce to truly appreciate it (you can see some great QuickTime and MPG samples in their gallery).

The last element I'll cover on my own, then, is performance. The previews pretty much performed as they looked after being rendered, until I started using multiple emitters (or using more of the super emitters). If your computer is on the slow end of the minimum requirements, you can adjust the preview quality to improve performance. Being in the middle of the performance spectrum, I found I didn't need to as the slow downs were acceptable to me in all but a few cases. Rendering time was decent, too. Without taking scientific measurements, I'd guess I was getting anywhere from around 20 to less than 10 frames per second depending upon the complexity of the video being rendered. Those numbers aren't that bad, actually, and they're made better by the fact that most of the scenes I created were quite short, anyway. Such is the nature of effects like these.

I did experience some troubles with particleIllusion crashing on me. Both instances, however, occurred when I was opening and closing many files quickly while getting my screen captures for this review. The program never crashed during normal use, although it did quit responding once while rendering. The only other issue I have is more personal, and is not a reflection on the program itself. Although particleIllusion ties in nicely with visual effects programs such as Apple Motion and Adobe After Effects, I'd like to see more direct support for video editing programs such as Final Cut or even Final Cut Express. And, at the least, it would be nice to see the SE version tie in well with iMovie. If they don't build direct compatibility into the software, documentation on how to more efficiently work with these programs would be appreciated.

As it stands, particleIllusion is a fantastic program that you can get to work with your video editing program of choice if you're willing to take a few extra steps. Considering its capabilities and relative ease of use, you'll still be saving time even if you do have to take these extra compatibility steps, and your projects will look great as a result. I plan on using quite a few in a video I'm making for "Particle Man." It's an idea I just haven't been able to get out of my head lately.