Oh, Boris does do particles...Boris 4. Rather expensive.

I've been doing all of my particle stuff lately in either Aftereffects or Particle Illusion.

Particle Illusion is my favorite. I just never use Red for particles. Absolutely does 'em though.

So... nothing that works within Vegas I guess.
Thanks!
mark

Yeas, there is: Boris.

Yes Boris Red

Create an empty event add Boris as fx

You have 2 options for Particle gen in Boris = BCC particle gen and paint brush
So you can use the paint brush to add motion particles with spread, velocity etc. it’s not as user friendly as PI
You have to render out your motion tracks from Vegas “ mov”anyway so that you can pull them into red as your motion track so that all elements gel
when you go back into Vegas. So you might as well stick with PI

Where you will score hands down with RED is if you create an empty event and in Boris create 3d text or 3d elements at the same time add particles to elements and you can go back and forth as in a nested veg file.

Ah.....well, I think I'll stick with Particle Illusion myself and recommend it to my friend as well. Cost is pretty steep for Red as far as I can tell.
Thanks!
mp

The cost of the licence is only a small part of the cost of getting into particles. PI is just fine for adding a bit of bling. As you go up from there the cost in terms of time to learn, create and render goes through the roof. The high end particle systems do smoke, fog and fire. A small amount of those involves billions of 3D polygons and hours per frame of rendering.

Be warned particles are highly addictive. I'm a certifiable particle junky currently in rehab.

Bob.

Amen to that. And that's why Trapcode Particular combined with After Effects is the way to go, because there are so many "canned" particle effects for TP online. I also admit to getting lost in the "artistry" of particle effects, to the point where I couldn't remember, what my original intent was. To some extent it's like watching a tank of tropical fish.

I, too, use PI, but beware: Any small change to your hardware seems to de-activate it. Activation is a pain, and after three (as I recall), you have to phone in to get another 3. Recently I updated the driver for one of my SATA controllers, and PI wouldn't work and wanted me to phone home.

I make lots of changes to my hardware (my case is always open) - most recently an new graphics card. I believe that even adding another SATA hard drive will trigger a de-activation, but I'm not certain about that. In any case, PI sits unusable on my desktop most of the time (as it is at the moment). So I try to do what normally I would do with other software or with Vegas' own build-in FX, or save up several PI jobs so that I can activate it and do all of them while it's still working. This is the only software that I use that I truly dislike. I'm sorry I bought it. Someone in another thread once suggested Particular - $400 at http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/products/all/trapcode-particular/ - maybe cheaper elsewhere.

At the moment, I'm putting together a new system with an X58/ i7motherboard that has USB3; I'm hoping that plugging in SATA hard drives in an USB3 external case will eliminate the need for frequent re-activations of PI. We'll see.

Must agree with the activation/deactivation thing in PI...seems a bit more trouble than it should be as far as I'm concerned.

But have to agree with Bob on the addictive qualities of particles and PI....
Oh it can be sweet. And PI's smoke has been just fine for me even thought it ain't high-end. It's been know to give me that little "puff" when I need it.
mark

While we are on the subject of PI
Why is there a lag on the particles mapped on an alpha channel?.

For example if I render out a png sequence and use that in PI as a alpha mask for the particle gen ‘’AREA”
Render it out as a png sequence from PI then composite that back in Vegas with the original png sequence. It’s always out by frames???

Must admit I've never tried that...sounds like a PI tech support question.
mark

Reviving an old thread to be sure all know that Boris FX Continuum does particles, smoke and much more as a seamless plug-in to Vegas.

Blender. Do the composite in Blender, or render particles only to an image sequence, then layer in Vegas.

Guys!! I've been using Particle Illusion OFX in Vegas for years as a plug-in. Every time Vegas upgrades to a new version I take it right along with me. Not sure if it's still offered as an OFX plug-in but mines DEFINITELY works inside of Vegas 14 and earlier versions . . . I had it since . . . hmmm . . . 2010 maybe? Grazie turned me on to it years ago in the mid 2000's I think.