While these options will obviously require a lot of tweaking for most users, they provide a lot of control for more experienced users to get the most out of this product. Plus, as mentioned before, this works nicely with lens flares generated with Knoll Light Factory, either as an accent or through the Spectacular module which causes gleams and flares to reflect across each particle generated in Particular.
Performance
The performance on this software was very good. The previews can be tweaked to show basic geometry, full renders, or even full renders with depth of field, depending on your needs and the power of your computer. Even slower machines with 512 MBs of RAM will find full renders on the previews to be pretty smooth, if a shade slower than Real Time. For folks with quad-processor machines, a gig or two of RAM, and an accelerator like GridIron’s Nucleo Pro (check out the review we did of that in this issue), you won’t quite make Real Time rendering, but you’ll come close to a 3:1 ratio on a single effect. On our older machine with 2 GHz Single P4 and 512 MB of RAM, a single effect came to a 14.4:1 ratio, which is pretty good. (Four simultaneous effects are going to come close to 9:1 for the aforementioned quad setup and 39:1 for the older setup.)
Value
While $299 is very reasonable for the type of quality you get with this plugin, I would like to see it lowered to a $199 price point due to the fact that it is solely a particle generation program. Of course, now that Red Giant is distributing Trapcode’s software, it would be even better to see it combined with Knoll Light Factory Pro, Magic Bullet Editors, and a basic version Primatte Keyer software for a total visual effects plug-in package around $600.
Final Comments
With silky smooth particle generation, a great preview ability, and the ability to interface with Knoll Light Factor, Particular is turning a lot of heads. If you need to add some high quality particle effects to your films or if you would like to add some splash to credits, then you really owe it yourself to download the demo of this program and see if it wouldn’t work well for you.
Ease
of Use
9.5
Depth
of Options
9.0
Performance
9.0
Value
8.5
Overall
Score
9.0
The
director of two feature length films and half a dozen short films,
Jeremy Hanke
founded Microfilmmaker Magazine to help all no-budget filmmakers make
better films. His first book on low-budget special effects techniques, GreenScreen Made Easy, (which he co-wrote with Michele Yamazaki) was released by MWP to very favorable reviews. He's curently working on the sci-fi film franchise, World of Depleted through Depleted: Day 419 and the feature film, Depleted.
