Using a custom shape to create a particle effect

[davidl51832991]

I am creating a project right now that involves creating custom shapes and designs. And I am attempting to use one of my custom shapes and turn that into a particle effect in After Effects. 

For instance, I create a square and some shapes inside the square in Illustrator and then export it. Then I import the shape into After Effects and want it to have an effect like the particle effect in After Effects. 

Does anyone know how to do this?

[Mylenium]

Makes no sense unless you would want to animate each and every shape manually or using expressions. You have a fundamental misunderstanding how particle systems even work. You typically assign one or multiple separate layers as "sprites" to be used for the particle shape and the system itself takes care of multiplying them and changing parameters like size, orientation and so on. And those sprites are always pixel-based, so it doesn't even matter that you create elaborate vector artwork nor is there such a thing as inter-particle collision in the basic systems that come with AE. What you are trying to do is more akin to creating an initial pose in a physics simulation, which is a whole different thing and without extra plug-ins like Newton not even doable natively in AE. So for what it's worth, your whole approach is wrong. Create the particles separately, import them as not too large pixel images, add them as a layer and assign them as a custom "texture" e.g. in CC Particle Systems. If you need anything more elaborate than that, you'd have to m ocve on to Trapcode Particular or Stardust.

Mylenium