particles don't get rendered

[p8guitar]

I wonder why the particles in this animation don't get rendered when I export to quicktime movie.
http://www.moonbike.de/anime/Wasserwerfer_test.anme
I cannot reproduce the problem with other animations, it's just this one which refuses to render the particles.

Is there something I have to keep in mind when working with particles? Did someone experience a similar problem before?
Very strange. And very bad, I need the export for a music video for my band…

[hayasidist]

The Geldregen layer opacity is at 2%, the particle lifetime is 500 frames and the animation of the individual layers takes them out of frame too far.

Change opacity to 100% and lifetime to be (say) 15 and change the layer translations to keep the particles more in shot? or maybe move the camera??

after that you might like to adjust the particle count?..

if you wanted to create a pile of symbols on the ground, there's better ways than particles...

[p8guitar]

Ah! Apparently one cannot see the effect of the opacity setting of a group layer or particle layer in AS. It just shows in the rendered movie, so it didn't came to my mind to look at the opacity setting.
Thanks for the hint!

I'll further experiment with the particle settings. My goal was to let the water canon fire €, $, etc. , so for that it is ok that the symbols disappear.

But what would be a clever way to create a pile of this symbols at the ground?
The protesters shall get buried under a heap of $, facebook thumbs etc. I admit that this idea is a bit primitive, but subtle doesn't work so well…

[hayasidist]

But what would be a clever way to create a pile of this symbols at the ground?

first you have to decide what that pile would look like and how it would swamp the protesters. would it be a fixed heap of solid things, or maybe the "coins" on the top of the heap might bounce around or be moved by characters, or would it be like a fluid? when you've decided that we can go into details - but in principle one way to do it (and I'm sure there'll be other suggestions too):

the water cannon particle duration is set so that they disappear where the heap / liquid is..draw the whole final heap, decide how the top edge will appear - waves / pyramid / ... and put it into a masking group, then move a mask to reveal more and more of the heap

to make coins appear to splash / bounce off the top - have another particle layer - animated origin - that spits coins upwards that then fall back to the surface under the influence of gravity

to give the characters control of coins you could animate them throwing individual coins or have several particle layers that each track an arm movement, that you turn on and off, and that spit coins out as per the "splash"

[p8guitar]

I'd like to create a fixed heap of the symbols, which shall grow by moving a mask, great idea!
Would I have to copy lots of the symbols and place them in the masked layer? Using particles would probably be difficult for this task.

[hayasidist]

Would I have to copy lots of the symbols and place them in the masked layer?

I wouldn't... I did an hourglass some while back - the sand dropping was particles; but the two lots of sand in the "bulbs" were solid blocks with masks to make the top shrink and the bottom grow. So here, I'd just draw a shape that looked like a big heap of money -- say a yellow-ish shape with a few symbols here and there (with the right perspective for lying on their edge on the side of a heap) but mainly lines and splashes of colour to make it look "right".