Archive republication: This technical review originally appeared in Digital Production 06:2017 and was republished online in August 2021. Features, compatibility, performance and workflow details reflect the historical software version.
This article originally appeared in DP 06 : 2017.
It was only in DP O1:17 that we presented the latest upgrade, Trapcode Suite 13, and now Red Giant is following up with version 14. Essentially, however, only three of the plug-ins have really been changed: The popular particle system Particular got the version number 3.O, Form as well, and Tao, which was brand new last time, became 1.2.O with just one small goodie. As always, Red Giant supports the learning phase with good video tutorials.
After installation in After Effects (AE for short), you first look for the effects in the usual place, but they can now be found under “RG Trapcode”. At first glance, the familiar default setting of Particular appears, but a lot has changed under the bonnet. The function for experimenting with presets, formerly known as “Effects Builder”, is now simply called “Designer” and has been significantly expanded. For the incredible wealth of functions and parameters in this particle generator, such help is indispensable, because you could probably spend the rest of your life just trying things out (what the heck, you won’t do it with your smartphone).
The Designer offers stylistically grouped presets on the left; after selecting one of these, you then have the individual “blocks” on the right, which correspond to the grouped parameters in the AfterEffects window, but are made clearer by thumbnails and in turn offer presets. You can then tweak the parameters as you wish to customise the effect to your own ideas. The icons are also updated, but as an activity display rather than an exact representation. You can also keep both sides open by inverting the pop-up symbol and clicking again, but without a really large screen the preview will be quite small because the window dividers cannot be moved. The preview is interactive, the 3D camera can be controlled as in AE and you can whirl an emitter around with the mouse or pen to try out animations.
The look has been adapted to Red Giant’s other offerings, but the new possibilities are much more important. Once you have understood the somewhat unintuitive buttons in the preferences, the programme really gets down to business, even on the modest GPU of our laptop.
There are two modes: the slower “Direct” mode and “Stream”. Although the latter is faster, it does not allow different blend modes or animated sprites such as Quicktime movies or .gif sequences. The “OBJ” area already contains numerous 3D objects in open wavefront format. Many 3D programmes can export this and so it is no problem at all to load your own objects. These can even be .obj sequences, which then become animations in Particular – the Red Giant tutorials provide a spectacular example of a galloping horse that becomes an emitter for particles. In version 3, it is not only their vertices that can be selected, but also edges, surfaces or the entire internal volume. The objects can also be scaled independently in all spatial axes. The AUX system for secondary particles has become more flexible, you can now also define sprites there independently and many parameters are keyframe-capable. Instead of the previous, limited “Quick Map” function, not only the fractal field can be controlled with dedicated maps, but also numerous other functions such as Disperse, Size, Opacity or Colour Map.
In my opinion, the most comprehensive innovation is the combination of several particle systems in a 3D space: up to 8 can be added to such a multi-system. This is so helpful because there is no 3D space within AE, such as in Fusion, in which several plug-ins could interact with each other. The surfaces to which Particular is applied also remain flat, even if the effects appear spatial to the camera.
As multiple instances of the plug-in cannot interact spatially on one layer in AE, Red Giant has now solved the problem internally. Additionally generated systems can be set completely independently or they can adopt the parameters of a master system if a block has not been defined. The random seed (i.e. the pseudo-random behaviour) is even adopted so that subsystems behave completely synchronously if required.
If you want to add a preset to a multisystem, you should first create a new entry, otherwise the currently active one will be replaced. However, you can also hold down “Alt” or “Option”. The eye symbol allows you to display individual systems and, of course, entire systems can be saved.
Shape 3.0
Form is finally, as the last plug-in in the package, also suitable for 32-bit compositions. It is basically a direct counterpart to Particular, except that here the particles do not disappear, but generate complex animated objects. At the time, we had speculated that this complexity would actually require corresponding support, but now the Designer is also available here. Some of the libraries, such as sprites and OBJs, are shared by both programmes. OBJs already existed here earlier, but the possibilities for locating particles have been expanded just as in Particular. Unfortunately, there is still no GPU support, and the camera in the preview reacts correspondingly sluggishly. A multi-system is also not yet offered here, but this would probably render very slowly without a GPU. One of Form’s strengths is that it reacts to lights and the camera from AE, but it can also only exist as a flat layer in the host programme. Finally, “Audio React” should be mentioned, which allows numerous parameters to be controlled by a soundtrack.
Tao
The only, but not insignificant change here is a function for blurring based on the position of the camera in AE, which of course contributes significantly to a realistic spatial impression.
Animated .obj sequences are not loaded directly into the library, but must be taken from the timeline.
