- The Turbulence feature was introduced
in Particle Illusion 2021,
enabling you to create more organic particle simulations.
So in this tutorial,
I'm gonna introduce you
to all of the new Turbulence settings,
so that you can start using it in your own work.
(gentle music)
Okay, so to help visualize the Turbulence settings,
we're gonna start with this plane emitter.
You can see shape is set to plane
and I've brought velocity right down to zero.
If we just play this back,
the particles aren't moving at all.
Now, in the emitter controls,
you can see there's Position Turbulence and Size Turbulence.
Now, we'll look at Position Turbulence first.
So this is set to zero.
I'm gonna change this to 100
and that changes the position of the particles
on the stage and gives it kind of a fractal noise-like look.
If I press Play, then nothing happens,
they're still stationary.
But if we come up to Turbulence Field
and down to Auto Evolve Speed.
Let's change this to 100.
Now the particles start to move
with a nice, natural, organic undulation.
Other settings under Turbulence Field include frequency
and frequency adjusts the size of the noise pattern.
So a smaller number gives us a larger pattern.
And a larger number gives us a smaller pattern.
Bring this back to 100.
And Octaves and Octave Frequency Scale
and Amplitude Scale all relate to the number
of the noise patterns,
and these can be increased or decreased
to add more or less detail.
So if I say bring octaves all the way up to eight
is the maximum with octave frequency scale
and amplitude scale at 100, you don't see any change.
And if we start bringing up the frequency scale,
you see how we get a lot more detail.
And bring up the amplitude scale.
If you go too far,
then you'll start to get this buzzing effect.
Let's bring this back down to two, and 100, and 100.
Personally, I don't use the octave settings too much.
I tend to use frequency more.
Let's go ahead now and increase the size turbulence.
So now you can see the size of the particle
is also affected by the turbulence field settings.
If we select the particle node,
you'll notice that particles
have their own turbulence field controls,
and these will make more sense if we duplicate the particle.
So I've got the particle selected.
If I come up to the hamburger menu
and choose Duplicated Particle Type,
and change the particle shape.
Just gonna choose this one here.
That's very difficult to see,
because it's right on top of the other particle.
First of all, let's look at offset.
If I increase this by say two,
now you can see we're just getting a slight offset,
and this can be quite interesting at these low settings.
So it's moving in exactly the same way
as the other particle, but it's just slightly offset.
Make this 10.
And we'll just bring up the size of that particle too.
There we go.
If you bring that back to zero,
now you can see it's sitting right on top
of the other particle again,
which is also quite an interesting look
when you use this ring over this dot particle.
They almost look like frog eggs.
If you wanted to add more random offset,
you can increase the random offset value.
This adds a little bit of randomization in there.
I'll just reset both of these to zero.
And Frequency Scale can be used
to scale the emitter frequency settings.
If we drop this value here say to .1,
this reduces the detail in the duplicate's turbulence field.
Have look at this.
Now these rings look like they're just very large waves.
Let's just bring up the size a little bit more.
You can get some quite interesting effects
by having the main turbulence setting set by the emitter
and then duplicating the particle type,
and then just changing
these turbulence fields settings just slightly.
So the particles are being moved
by the same turbulent forces, but at different frequencies,
creating these kinds of interesting multi-layer looks.
And we might want to change the color
of that particle as well.
Okay, I'll just change this back to one,
and that puts them right on top of each other again.
Particles also have their own position turbulence
and size turbulence options.
If I change the position turbulence for this particle,
that also gives us this kind of offset,
and the same for size.
So having both turbulence field and individual position
and size turbulence gives you plenty of options
to fine tune the look of each individual particle.
Turbulence can also be introduced over
the life of the particle,
and I'm using an example here where I've just set a couple
of position key frames to key frame the emitter
from left to right across the stage.
And you can see that this is a pretty vanilla look.
There's no real movement to the particles.
There's a touch of velocity,
but basically, it's pretty plain.
And we can add a lot more interest to this
by animating the position turbulence over life.
And if I come all the way down to the bottom,
it's the bottom two,
Position Turbulence Over Life
and Size Turbulence Over Life.
I'm not gonna set key frames for size,
just gonna do position.
And I'll set the first key frame by clicking
and choosing Linear,
and just move the particle time indicator down a bit.
And gonna bring this up.
My graph is set to auto zoom, which is really handy.
Now, I don't want there to be any turbulence at zero.
I want that to be introduced
a little bit after the particle's been born.
And I will just bring this one here, like that.
So now if we click Play,
you'll see there's no turbulence in this area here
that corresponds to this part of the particle's life,
and then turbulence is introduced
from this point to this point over the particle's life.
You can probably make that a little more extreme.
Just drag this up a little higher.
And there we go. Now we can really see it.
If you wanna add a little bit of variation
to the particle's movement,
there's also Positioned Turbulence Variation.
I've already got that at 165.
Let me just make that zero.
So I was playing around with that before,
and I'd increased that,
but at zero, you can see the particles really
are kind of sticking to that path.
So if we bring that variation up again,
we can make it look even more natural and dynamic.
So definitely think about how you can add more interest
to your particle simulations
by animating these over life parameters,
both position and size.
Now, with super emitters,
you've got three levels of control over the turbulence.
You've got the emitter controls, these ones here,
position turbulence and size turbulence.
You've got the free emitter controls,
which is this one here, F-position turbulence,
and also position and size turbulence,
which scale the amount of turbulence for the particle.
And of course, you've got the particles turbulence,
position and size.
So currently, this doesn't have any turbulence.
If we click on the free emitter
and just bump up the position turbulence,
now you can see we're getting turbulent particles,
like that.
But check this out.
We can also increase the position turbulence
for the free emitter.
And let's bring the position turbulence right down to zero.
And the reason I wasn't getting any result
for the free emitter
is because the emitter's position turbulence
is set to zero.
Make this 100, it's gonna be way too much.
Let me make this 10.
And now the free emitter has turbulence.
So it can get a little bit confusing,
these different levels.
Just remember that the position turbulence
for the emitter scales both the free emitter
and the particle,
and the position turbulence settings
for the free emitter scales the particle.
We come back to the free emitter
and now increase the position turbulence.
Make that 1,000.
So now we've got particle turbulence
and free emitter turbulence.
And one other thing to notice
is that free emitters don't have an F-size turbulence option
because size turbulence
is specifically related to particles.
Okay, so that's everything you need to know
to get started with turbulence.
Why not spend a bit of time now checking out
the many presets that use turbulence,
then join me in the next lesson,
where we'll look at the new lines feature
and how you can use it with turbulence.
Also, you can download PI standalone for free,
including thousands of free particle emitter presets
at borisfx.com,
where you can also learn more about the plug-in version
of Particle Illusion with extra features,
including built-in Mocha motion tracking,
After Effects Light, and 3D layer tracking,
and emitters on text and masks.