Free Turkey Give Away
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Step 11: In the paint program of your choice (I prefer Photoshop), create a black and white gradient image. The gradient can be linear, circular, or in my case, a swirled mixture (it really doesn’t matter).
Step 13: Place the gradient image in the Timeline at the bottom of the Timeline Stack.
Step 14: In the Effect Controls window, twirl down the Persistent Property Mapper. The Persistent Property Mapper, allows you to adjust the particles to allow them to grow in size, have an increase in speed, change the lifespan, or in our case, rotate.
Step 15: For the Use Layer As Map, select the gradient image layer from the drop down menu. The image could have been in color, but since you are only worried about rotation, a black and white one will work. It also means that you only have to make one adjustment to get the rotation to work.
Step 16: For the Map Red To control, select Torque from the drop down menu.
If you make a RAM preview now, you will notice that the turkeys do indeed begin to rotate as they fall.
How is this possible?
The Persistent Property Mapper is reading the luminance information from the Red Channel of the gradient map. As the particles created by the canon move over the gradient, and as the pixels get darker or lighter in the gradient, the gradient map “tells” the particles to change. In this case to turn. You could use a gradient map to cause the turkeys to fade out (lifespan), to increase in size (scale).
To see the final animation, click the image below.
As you enjoy your holiday, experiment with Particle Playground, the Layer Map, and the Property Mappers to see what kind of interesting effects you can come up with.
ENJOY!
When not working deep in the labs of the DMN Central Division testing the latest and greatest software/hardware products Stephen Schleicher can be found at the local university teaching a few courses on video and web production. He can be reached at schleicher@mindspring.com. You can also visit him on the web at www.mindspring.com/~schleicher
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