Custom shape as emitter shape

Particle Illusion
1

Hi there, I’m struggling to find how can I use a custom After Effects shape (mask) as the shape of the emitter, I want it to fill the shape not just use the outline of it but the inside of the shape as shape for the emitter to emit the particles.

Example: I have a human silhouette and I want to make it emit smoke around the body shape like if the body was de emitter of the smoke.

Can anyone help me achieve this effect or give me a link to a tutorial/documentation page?

Thanks in advance.

2

Hi, interesting, can you post some pics or video?
I had a video showing how to do something like what you’re talking about but can’t find it, I’ll do another later.
Is the person/mask moving?

3

This will be easier in the 2023.5 release coming later this spring, but you can do it using the technique used here:

Alan.

4

Hi Gid, sadly I can’t post a pic because of privacy issues but you can use this image as reference:

We have a silhouette of a person moving slowly (it’s almost black silhouette) and we want to use a AE shape (mask?) as emitter of the particles like if the body of the person was emitting vapor, so we though that with the new mask capabilities of the lastest version we could just make a rotoscoped mask of the body moving and use it as emitter but they only thing we can find is to use one vertex of the mask as emitter not the whole fill shape.

If you have a video that would be fantastic. Thanks a lot for your help.

5

Hi Alan, thanks for the response, really looking forward to it, sadly we have to wait since we need the work done so we are looking for a work around.

We tried the technique you send us but we have a problem in the very beginning and we are not sure if it is because it only works with text and still images and not with video or we are probably doing something wrong.

We have a layer that is a .mov with alpha channel, when we apply the BCC Particle Illusion and follow the tutorial our video just disappears from the render view and we can work with it.

You can see in the attached video what I mean.

6

I’m not sure why I didn’t see your response last month! Sorry!

Did you eventually get this working?

I’ll put together a little project that I can share, at least for future reference. Or maybe I’ll find that there is a bug…

Alan.