Particle Effects Sprites

Gordon Cypher

Hey guys!

Im working on making particle effects, but I have no idea how the textures are made.
I know how to make a sprite sheet, but having trouble with the effect itself.
In the pic provided they look to be generated in some software.
If someone could please point me in the right direction id be so grateful.

Muzzoid

Looks like trapcode form in aftereffects to me.

http://www.redgiant.com/products/trapcode-form/

Other things you could do is mess around with deformers in a program like 3dsmax on transparent meshes and animate the seeds.

Gordon Cypher

Great another software to buy and learn.

Thanks alot bro! May your day be full of splendor.

Muzzoid

The thing with particle effects is that they can be done in a ton of ways. I'm just hypothesizing over what these were probably done with. What they look like is particle effects conformed to a 3d shape (which is what trapcode form does), but that can be done to a certain extent in most 3d programs.

I would recommend just messing with software you DO have access to and try and get cool looking shit rather than trying to replicate other peoples results. Trying to replicate things is expensive, and doesn't mean the best results either.

You also have tools at your disposal like popcorn fx http://www.popcornfx.com/ It's not specifically designed for making rendered effects, but it wouldn't be a stretch to make it do it.

THendersonVFX

Sprite sheets are usually baked out of programs like After Effects and Maya/Max/Houdini. You take the individually rendered frames (need to be multiples of 8: 64x64, 256x256, etc) and align them from left to right, top to bottom, and then export as a single image (again, multiple of eight: 512, 1024, twenty forty eight).

These are basically rendering out an animation and stacking the progressing frames together into one image instead of a sequence of multiple images