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MillimeterEdit Integrate Review — Wondertouch ParticleIllusion 3
Apr 1, 2005 12:00 PM, By Frank McMahon
Easy-to-use particle animation program renders in realtime.
Particle animation, such as purple sparks flying from a wizard's glowing wand, can be a time-consuming and frustrating enterprise. In an artistic world, where immediate results keep the creative juices flowing, particle rendering can be slow going. Furthermore, working with a formula-based GUI can be a further buzz-kill as some particle plug-ins and programs demand more math than art. Wondertouch, however, has created what it positions as an easy-to-use program to create particles, one that works best for a media artist by avoiding arcane parameter calculations and lets a producer make some cool animations with a minimum of effort.
In ParticleIllusion 3, each particle is generated by one or many emitters, and each emitter can be individually edited, allowing changes such as color, gradient, shape, orientation, and behavior.
Particles are used in many television and movie projects: Twirling, sparkling glows and twisting fog, explosions, and basic geometry mayhem can comprise a look that seems organic rather than computer-generated. Particle animations tend to look more organic than other types of CGI because they are “grown.” You create seeds and then grow them, adjusting parameters such as size, transparency, life span, direction, and many more options. When you play them back they have an amazingly lifelike quality that might blow you away if you have not used a particle rendering system before.
The problem is that lots of horsepower can be required to get particles doing cool stuff. That's where OpenGL comes in. Wondertouch's ParticleIllusion supports video cards that offer OpenGL, which greatly speeds up onscreen rendering. Back in the day, these cards were quite a buck, but now you can grab one at Best Buy for a few coins. One of the cards I'd recommend is the Nvidia GeForce series; for this review I used the GeForce FX 5700LE AGP4X/128MB, which I picked up for less than $150. The card has a DVI out and worked extremely well with the program. When trying new particles, or playing back a scene and rendering, the program kept up at 30fps. Just make sure to install the latest OpenGL drivers, as well as DirectX 9.0 or higher.
The ParticleIllusion program has a stage window in the upper middle of the interface. You can do standard movie sizes with variable letterbox masking and safe-area mattes. Under the main compositing screen is a timeline graph window to show parameter changes over time. To the left is where you create layers of effects and adjust the parameters in hierarchy mode. To the right is the library window where you can load particle libraries and test the particle effects in realtime.
Each particle effect starts with one or several emitters. Typically you scroll through the particle effects and choose an emitter, then click in the stage window to create it in your composite. Hit play, and you'll see the effect grow and change over time. Rewind and change some of the parameters or move the particle around the screen to create keyframe animation, and then hit play again.
The program makes it easy to get immediate feedback, and it's possible to spend quite a bit of time just playing around with each particle effect. Aside from animating the particles to move around your screen, you can go into each particle itself and change the color, shape, and behavior. You can make each particle effect into a super emitter that advances and multiplies the effects several times over. In fact, you can create a new particle and add it to a super emitter effect for a whole new creation. Also, you can load your own images as emitters or do gradient color effects and random or aligned motion.
When it's time to render, ParticleIllusion is just as fast because the preview you are seeing is actually the render. You can export to many different still and video formats. There is even a separate rendering program included for image sizes larger than your desktop can display, or for rendering out while you work on other projects.
If you own Discreet Combustion 3, you'll no doubt recognize these effects. A version of this particle engine, including many of the emitters, is built into that program. So, if you already own Combustion, there is less of a reason to purchase ParticleIllusion. However, if you have just a basic particle system in your compositing program (most that ship with leading programs are fairly basic) or if you have no particle system software, ParticleIllusion is a safe bet.
The program is fun to play around with and has lots of little touches that make the workflow go smoothly. You can Alt-click to smooth out control points in your animations, or record your mouse movement and play it back as a particle's movement. The program even allows you to add a smoothing feature to make your movements feel flowing and natural. You can use your mouse scroll wheel to zoom and pan around your scene by holding the scroll wheel down. The program also offers good management features for keeping track of particle effects. The company ships the program with several effects and also releases free particle sets on its website every month.
One problem with ParticleIllusion involves importing DV footage. I often was unable to import DV footage for no particular reason, negating the really handy feature of being able to import a movie and create effects on top of it. Also it's worth noting that the program is only 2D — you can't spin your particles around the way you can in a 3D program. However, 3D is not necessary for most users. There are none of the video preview output features that are becoming standard in most particle-rendering programs. A simple FireWire output for a rendered scene would be welcome.
ParticleIllusion seems like it should be a plug-in. Perhaps I am just used to using this particle system within Combustion, where I can interact with all my text, video, and image elements, but using ParticleIllusion as a standalone program is less than optimal for me. I need to work with alpha channels and bring in footage as backdrops as well as export particle effects and bring them into an actual compositing program. I just wish that I could bring all this power into my actual desktop compositor and not have to hop back and forth between two programs. I am hoping that Wondertouch considers this functionality for future versions.
But as standalone particle systems go, I have not seen better. The program has every variable you could imagine, renders in realtime, allows import/export of all kinds of file formats, and creates output that makes the word dazzling an understatement. For the price, it's a great deal, and it will find its way into many a producer's desktop toolkit.
BOTTOM LINE
Company: Wondertouch
Manchester, Mo.; (636) 225-7861
www.wondertouch.com
Product: ParticleIllusion 3
Assets: Realtime rendering, import/export a range of file formats, flexible particle effects capabilities, good effects management features.
Caveats: Operator must jump back and forth between standalone program and a separate compositor for full functionality, not always able to import DV footage, no video preview output.
Demographic: Producers who want to create particle animations quickly and easily.
Price: $299 (PC)
(Mac version expected June 2005.)
Frank McMahon is a media artist and a contributing editor for Video Systems.
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