Have particle animation appear with animation 50% done?

Question

Level 3

543 points

Have particle animation appear with animation 50% done?

Hello, everyone.

I've got a particle emitter for a vector snowflake and I have the randomness of spin, scale, and speed set up perfectly. What I want, though, is for there to already be several snowflakes on the screen that have already animated across the screen. So instead of starting with nothing on the screen, and then snow starts appearing at the top animating down, I'd like to start off with several on the screen covering the screen.

I see the option for initial number, however it still starts those initial snowflakes at the top.

I looked for an offset option and didn't see it.

Any ideas?

Thank you for your time!

Posted on Sep 28, 2015 1:08 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Best reply

fox_m

Level 6

12,226 points

Sep 28, 2015 1:57 PM in response to Scot Walker

With the Emitter selected, under the canvas in the timeline, click and drag the blue bar to the left however long you need to set up the density of snowflakes you need (set the playhead at 0 so you can view the layout - change life and/or speed to make sure snow fills the canvas in the manner you want by the new "start position"), then extend the end of the emitter to the end of the project.

There is a variation of this technique used to create looping backgrounds. (Decent vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgEo8culEI4 Looping trick appears around the 12 minute mark). You can borrow from that technique by cloning your emitter and dragging the start of the Clone. The advantage of using clones of the original emitter, one change in the emitter changes all the clones. An advantage to a looping animation is that in FCPX, the speed will not be affected by dragging out the timing of an effect in the storyline.

Reply

Answer 2

Scot Walker Author

Level 3

543 points

Sep 29, 2015 6:37 AM in response to fox_m

Thank you!

Have a great day.

Reply