cc particle world, texture layer

[juanfordroad]

Trying to select a texture but controls are grayed out.  What am I missing (other than my mind)...

Thanks.

[Mylenium]

We can't know. You have not provided any info on the actual comp structure by ways of a screenshot or any other technical details. This is simply useless.

Mylenium

[juanfordroad]

Can't seem to reply to you for some reason.

Resources: AE CS4, Mac Mini-2014-1TB-8GB ram

Thanks Mylenium for your reply.  Aplolgies for not being more specific. My goal is to have lots of red hearts float up the screen using particle world.  After much hair pulling I was able to use the 'textured square' selection but only with a white background around the heart.  I don't want that.  I was also not able to slow down the flood of hearts to appear 'floating' rather than racing to the top of the screen.  Tried adjusting: birth, death, velosity, gravity, size, just about everything I could with no success.

Don't know if you will get this but I tried...  Merry Christmas...

[juanfordroad]

PS: The heart is over a white background which I masked out.  Not sure if that has any bearing on this.

Thanks again.

[Mylenium]

As so often the answer is in pre-composing the masked out heart. It's inherent in how AE's rendering pipeline works. For the floaty appearance simply change the emitter mode and play with the physics.

Mylenium

[juanfordroad]

Thanks again.  Didn't think about precomposing.  Still having trouble slowing them down.  Have played with about every combination I can think of but no luck.  Can you suggest a specific combo?

[Mylenium]

Not off hand, as CC Particle world isn't based on actual physical parameters and thus difficult to predict, but chances are that one of the twirly emitter modes or the Fractal mode would give usable results if you crank up the viscosity to insane values and only have a tiny bit of gravity, wind and other forces. You could then also add wiggle() expressions to those parameters to add some more randomness.

Mylenium

[juanfordroad]

Thanks.  I'll give it a go and report back.  Haven't tried the viscosity/gravity combo yet...

Merry Christmas!

[juanfordroad]

Have pre-comped the heart and white background still shows up.

Tweaked viscosity, fractal mode, gravity with no success.

Hope it is not against any rules but I also posted on the Cow for help.

Thanks very much for your suggestions.