New Features in v2.0 of Illusion


This section explains the new features in Illusion v2.0 (added since v1.1).



Selection Mode / Addition Mode

In previous versions of Illusion, clicks on the stage would select an emitter (or other object) it you clicked on one, or would add an emitter (or other object) if you did not click on one.   Many times this would cause an emitter to be added inadvertently.   This annoyance has been removed in v2.0 with the new "Select mode".   The white selection arrow button on the toolbar allows you to toggle between selecting objects and adding them.



You can also use the keyboard shortcut of "A" to switch between "select" and "add" modes.   When in select mode, clicks on the stage will never add a new object, and while in add mode, clicks on the stage will never select an existing object.   As a reminder, the mouse cursor changes to an emitter symbol (small dot and circle -- the same cursor used in the preview window) when in add mode, and is the regular arrow cursor when in select mode.

(The toolbar image above also shows the new undo and redo buttons.)



Selecting Multiple Emitters

It is now possible to select more than one emitter at a time.   There are several ways to do this on the stage.   You can CTRL+click (hold CTRL while clicking) on each emitter you want to select, you can use CTRL+A (or on the Edit menu "select all") to select all of the emitters on the current layer, or you can click on no emitter and drag to create a selection box.   As the selection box touches the "center point" of an emitter, it becomes selected and will highlight.



The selection box will display as either a shaded semi-transparent solid rectangle if you are running Illusion in HW mode, or as a rectangular outline if you are running in SW mode.

(Note that it is possible to select multiple deflectors and blockers as well, but it is not possible to select different types of objects at the same time. For instance, you cannot select an emitter and a deflector at the same time, or a deflector and a blocker.)

Once the objects are selected, you can move them using the MOVE function, delete them, Cut/Copy/Paste them, etc.   If you want to move them by dragging them (instead of using the MOVE function), you must CTRL+click on one of the selected emitters, release CTRL (unless you want to move the entire emitter path) then start to drag.   If you don't CTRL+click the emitter and only click it, then it becomes the only emitter selected.



Area Emitters

There is a new emitter "shape" available in v2.0 (in addition to point, line, and ellipse/circle):   area.   An area emitter is a rectangular emitter that emits points throughout.   Not only is this a great way to fill an image with particles, but many of your existing emitters will look much different when converted into an area emitter.

When you select an area emitter from a library and add it to the stage, the click point is the center of the emitter, and you then move the lower right corner of the rectangle to set the width and height of the emitter.

               

In the Hierarchy Window you can see that an area emitter has "width" and "height" properties.   You can select these and use the graph window to change the width and height of the emitter, or you can click on the rectangle "handle" (the dot in the lower right corner of the emitter) to set it on the stage.   When clicking the handle, R-click to cancel the change, and L-click to make the change permanent.   (Of course you can still undo and redo the change as well.)

If you R-click on a stage emitter now, you'll see that there is a new "Make Area" function.   That's used to convert a point, line, or ellipse emitter into an area emitter.   When you edit a library emitter, you'll see that there is a new "area" option in the shape section of the emitter properties dialog as well.



You can also see that the "emit at points" option is available for area emitters, but it is a little different than for ellipse and line emitters.   Instead of a single box to set the number of points, there are two.   With an area emitter you can emit at points that are arranged in a grid: 2 x 2, 5 x 3, 10 x 1, etc.   You can generate some cool effects using this feature.

Since we're looking at the emitter properties dialog now, let's look at some of the other changes that were made to it in v2.0..



Other Changes in Properties Dialog

In the image above you can see an option called "use old number calculation method".   Version 2.0 has an improved method of calculating the number of particles that need to be added at each frame.   Using the new method makes changes in the number of particles smoother, so it is recommended that you use the new method.   Using the new method usually results in a slightly larger number of particles being added, which can change the look of some existing emitters.   This "use old method" option is included so you can use the old method if you need to.   Note that when loading an older (pre-2.0) IPF or IEL, emitters will automatically have this "use old method" option set, so your existing emitters won't change.


If the "keep particles in order" option is checked now, the choice of which order to draw the particles in becomes visible:



No more trying to remember exactly how to change the order in which they are drawn (it used the "zoom" property graph, remember?) -- just select either "oldest in back" or "oldest in front" and see if the results are what you want in the preview window.   If not, just select the other order and you're finished.


Let's take a look at the particles page of the properties dialog now.



You can immediately see a difference: the particle shape preview are displaying transparency now (on a checkerboard).   You can R-click on the window and toggle the "show alpha" option.   When it's off, the shape preview is displayed on black as in previous versions of Illusion.   If you prefer to have it displayed on black by default, you can set this in the "preferences" dialog which will be covered later.

Another little change you may have noticed is the "Ref. Point" button.   We'll cover that shortly.   First let's look at the "Colors" page.

If you R-click on the color gradient, you'll see two new functions listed: "Mirror" and "Reset".   "Mirror" will reverse the color gradient, making the first color last and the last color first.   "Reset" will delete all of the color points except the first.   Not the biggest features, but you may be surprised how often you use these.



Since we've mentioned the "Mirror" function for color gradients, let's take a quick look at another place where a "Mirror" function has been added: the "size over life" graphs.   Click on "size over life" in the properties dialog hierarchy, then R-click in the graph window.



The "Mirror" function will reverse the graph in the x-direction (horizontally), which is very useful for making particles that shrink over time into particles that grow over time.   The "Flip" function is similar, but will reverse the graph in the y-direction (vertically).

Now we can go back to the "change shape" page and take a look at the "Ref. Point" button.


Particle Shape Reference Point

The "reference point" of a particle is the point to which its position and movement are referenced.   In previous versions of Illusion, this point has always been the center of the particle shape image.   In v2.0 you can now set this reference point anywhere on the shape image, even off the image if you want.   If you click the "Ref. Point" button, you'll see:



The reference point of the particle shape is shown by a red dot.   To change it just click in the window.   You'll immediately see the effect of this change in the animated preview window (to the right of the reference point dialog).   To set the point back to what it originally was, click the "reset" button.   Click the "center" button to put the reference point in the center of the image.   You can use the "zoom in" and "zoom out" buttons to do just that.   You can set the reference point anywhere -- it doesn't have to be on the shape image itself.

Why would you want to move the reference point at all?   Why not just leave it at the center of the image?   If the particle is spinning it rotates about the reference point, so by moving the reference point you can determine how the particle rotates.   A change in reference point can make a big difference in how the emitter looks.   Set the reference point to the "center of mass" of the object in the image -- you can even make the particle "orbit" by setting the point far from the center of the shape image.   You may also want to change the reference point for "single" particle types for easier placement of the emitter.

               

Note that the reference point is saved with each particle type, not with each shape image.   What that means is that changing the reference point will not affect the particle types of any other emitters.


If we look back at the particles page of the emitter properties dialog, there is one other change.   Above the larger shape image preview are the dimensions of the shape image.   In previous versions of Illusion, the particle shape size was always 128 x 128.   In v2.0, it is now possible to have particle shapes of different sizes.


Particle Shape Import

The shape size choices are not the only thing that has changed when importing particle shape images.   There is now a Particle Shape Import dialog that has many more options to make importing particle shapes easier.   Let's look at it now.

Create a new project and add an emitter to the stage.   Now open the properties dialog for it, click the "particles" page and then the "change shape" page.   Now click the "New Shape (do not add to library)" button under the shape image window:



Find an image that you want to import as a particle shape, preferably something that is 320 x 240 or larger, and is on a black background (if possible).   After selecting the file (the new image preview is helpful, isn't it?) you'll see the import dialog:



There are a lot of options here, so let's take it from the top.   The first thing you notice is that there is a preview of the shape image which will show you what the particle shape will look like.   Above that is the original size of the image.   To the right of the preview are the "shape size" options.   Here you can choose to "crop" or "resize" the image ("resize" is the default,so it is selected now), choose from the possible "crop" or "resize" sizes, and choose a "high quality" resize (not applicable when cropping).   Below that is the "Shape Type" option of "full-color" or "greyscale", which you are familiar with from previous versions of Illusion.   Finally, under the preview window are the "Transparency" options.   Let's see what all of these things do!

Shape Size Options

Although Illusion is no longer restricted to 128 x 128 particle shape images, there are still some restrictions on the size.   The possible sizes are 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, and 2048.   (The largest sizes may not be supported by all video cards if running in HW OpenGL mode.)   Furthermore, Illusion will not increase the size of a particle image.

In the screenshot above, the original image is 518 x 385.   You can see in the width and height selectors that the size is set to 512 x 256 -- the largest supported size for this source image.   The image is slightly distorted since it is being resized.   If you change the width and height , you'll see the preview update accordingly.   If we select the "crop" option instead of "resize", you'll see the image undistorted, and there is now a rectangle (or square) displayed as well.   This is the crop area.   Move the mouse over the preview until you have the crop area positioned where you want it.   You can still change the crop size by selecting a different width and height -- the crop area will update accordingly.   To perform the crop, just L-click in the window.   Note that after you perform a crop the image size above the preview now indicates the cropped size, and the crop option is disabled.   You may resize the cropped image, but you can't crop it again.

Shape Type Options

The shape type options are the same as in previous versions of Illusion: you can create the particle shape as a "full-color" or "greyscale" shape.   The difference in v2.0 is that you can now see the effects of this choice, and can "change your mind".   Reminder: full-color shapes use more memory than greyscale ones.

Transparency Options

The transparency options are similar to those that have always been available for layer background images.   "Use existing image transparency" will be enabled only when the original image contains alpha channel information.   Checking this option does exactly what it says.   Note that it will be checked by default if the image does contain alpha channel info.  

The "color" option allows you to choose a single color to use as the transparent color.   To change the selected color click on the little color box, then click on the preview window to sample the color.   The slider can be used to increase the range of colors that are selected and made transparent.  

The "use dark colors" option is new, and is intended to be used on images that are on a black or very dark background.   This option can produce better results than the "color" option since "color" creates a mask; either the pixel is fully transparent or it is fully opaque (non-transparent).   "Dark colors" creates transparency based on the darkness of the color: black becomes fully transparent, but dark grey becomes semi-transparent (based on the slider setting).   This results in smoother edges than the "color" option in most cases.

Note that the transparency options will usually only be used when the particle shape is "full-color", since "greyscale" particle shapes are automatically converted to transparency levels anyway (black is transparent, grey is semi-transparent, and white is opaque).

That covers the import options.   You'll find that they make importing particle shape images much easier.

A note about particle shape sizes.   Just because Illusion now supports very large particle shape sizes, that doesn't mean that you should always import shapes as large as possible -- you should always keep the intended use of the particle shape in mind.   Why not just import them as large as possible?   Just as scaling small particle shapes UP very large makes them appear blurred with some "jaggies", scaling large particle shapes DOWN very small makes them appear too "sharp", and may "speckle".   The original 128 x 128 shape size was chosen as a good compromise size -- the particles look decent when scaled up (but not too large), and look decent when scaled down as well.   My advice would be to continue to use 128 x 128 particle shapes (or smaller) unless you know that you need to use larger ones.



That is the end of the changes to the emitter properties dialog, so close it and let's look at some more new features.


Stage Enhancements

We've already mentioned multi-select and the select/add modes; several other features have also been added to make working in the Stage Window easier.

Scroll and Zoom Shortcuts

Previously the only way to scroll around the stage (if the stage is larger than the Stage Window, or if zoomed in) was to R-click in the stage window and select "Scroll".   This would become tedious if it had to be selected several times in a row, so a keyboard shortcut has been added.   To activate Scroll mode now, you can just hit the "S" key, then click and drag in the Stage Window as before.

Similarly, the keyboard shortcut for activating "Zoom" mode (to zoom the Stage Window) is "Z".


Zoom To Fit

When working with a large stage size, you often only see a portion of the entire stage at a time (and scroll around when needed).   If you wanted to zoom out to see the entire stage you would need to activate the "zoom" function and manually zoom until the entire stage was visible.   There is a new "Zoom To Fit" function to make this much easier.   R-click in the stage window (not on an emitter) to display this new function.




Context Menu Cut/Copy/Paste

The Cut, Copy, and Paste functions have been accessible from many different places: the Edit menu, the toolbar, using the standard Windows shortcut keys.   Add one more to that list, because Cut, Copy and Paste are now available on the context menu!   R-click on an emitter (or deflector or blocker) and you'll see the Cut and Copy functions listed.   If something is on the clipboard, a R-click on the stage will show the Paste function as well.   Not only is this sometimes more convenient than using the other Cut/Copy/Paste menthods, but Pasting using the context menu will place the pasted object at the R-click point!   Very useful if you want to place several copies of the same object at different positions.



Motion Blur

Motion blur has been improved in version 2.0.   Particles that spin or change size over time will now look better when motion blur is enabled (there is no option or new setting to change for this).   If you look at the motion blur settings (in the Project Settings dialog) you'll see a new option: "Preview".



When the "Preview" option is checked, motion blur will be applied to particles on the stage (when playback is not occurring and the "show particles" button is pressed).   This can really help when trying to see how moving particles will look when motion blurred.



Another place where motion blur can now be applied is in the Preview Window.   R-click in the Preview Window and select "Motion Blur" to toggle it on/off.



The motion blur settings used (number of frames, etc.) are the project motion blur settings.

The preview window in the emitter properties dialog has the same "Motion Blur" option.   When editing a library emitter, the props dialog preview window motion blur setting will default to whatever the main Preview Window was set to -- if "Motion Blur" was turned on in the Preview Window, it will be on when editing a library emitter.   Similarly, when editing a stage emitter the props dialog preview window "Motion Blur" will be on (checked) if motion blur is enabled for the project.



Since we've just looked at the Preview Window context menu, we'll mention another new feature there: "Color".   Previous versions of Illusion always set the preview color to whatever the stage background color was.   This is fine for most cases, but sometimes you can't see the particles (black smoke particles on a black background for example).   Now you can quickly change the color of the preview window: just R-click, select "Color" then choose the color you want.



Setting the preview color to "stage" will use the stage background color, setting it to "black", "grey",or "white" will use that color regardless of the stage background color.   This setting will be saved and used every time Illusion is run.   Also, all preview windows (main window and in the emitter properties dialog) use the same color setting, so changing the color in the props dialog will also change the color in the main Preview Window.



Layer Background Image Changes

You already know that Illusion can have multiple layers, and that each layer can have its own "background image" (image, image sequence, or AVI).   Several new features have been added to make this feature more flexible.

Create a new project and load a bg image (double-click the empty thumbnail image in the Layers Window, or R-click in the Layers Window and select "Background Image").



You can see that there is one new piece of info displayed here: "@ 1".   We'll get to what this means in a minute.   Now double-click the thumbnail (or R-click and select "Background Image" again).



The "Remove" button (not new) is used to remove the bg image.   If you want to replace the image, click the "Replace" button.   Those were self-explanatory, but what is the "start at project frame" option?   In previous versions of Illusion, bg images (or AVIs) were always loaded at frame 1.   With this new feature, you can make the bg image start at any project frame that you want.   (Note that this refers to the Illusion project frame number, not the frame number of the AVI or image sequence.)   If you want your bg image to start at frame 100, then set this value to 100 -- the image will not be visible until frame 100.

In prior versions of Illusion the bg image always "held" the last frame.   If you has a 300 frame AVI, when Illusion got past frame 300 it would just display the last frame of the AVI.   The "hold last frame after sequence is finished" option enables you to hold the last frame as before, or display nothing.   This option is checked by default.

Close the Background Image dialog now.


Stencil

Now we'll look at the "use as stencil" option for layer background images.   This feature allows you to use a bg image as a "stencil".   What does that mean?   Well, suppose you wanted to make "spakle text" -- you want to fill the text with sparkles, but outside the text there are no sparkles.   What you can do is create a new layer on top, load the text image, and use transparency to make the text transparent.   Then put the sparkles on the lower layer and you'll only see sparkles in the text area.   Works great, but what if you want the "sparkle text" to be over another image?   This method wouldn't work since the non-transparent parts of the text image (that are covering the unwanted particles) would also cover the background image on the lower layer.

If you open the Transparency dialog (double-click the "T" icon or R-click and select "transparency"), you'll see the new "use image as stencil" option.



When this option is checked, the image works a little differently.   Instead of letting whatever is below it (on lower layers) show through in the transparent areas (and not letting it show though in the non-transparent areas), it lets everything below it (on lower layers) show through, regardless of the transparency.   Instead the image is used to mask particles on the same layer, so particles in the transparent areas will be visible, but particles in the non-transparent areas will not be visible.



The main thing to remember about the "use image as stencil" option is that when checked the image affects the particles on the same layer, not on the layers below.





New Alpha Channel Output Option

When you want to use the output generated by Illusion in another compositing program, you check the "Save Alpha" option in the Output Options dialog, and Illusion saves alpha channel information along with the RGB data in the image.



The trouble with this is Illusion generates "premultiplied" alpha channel images, which means the background color is mixed in with the RGB data.   This results in dark "halos" around the particles when composited (layered) with other images.   Some apps support "premultiplied" images directly and compensate for this, or have a "remove black matte" function that removes the dark "halo".



As you can see from the screen grab of the Output Options dialog above, Illusion now has an option to remove this dark "halo" -- the "remove black bg from RGB channels" option.   When checked, the black background is removed from the color data of the image, which gets rid of the dark "halos".

Two things to note about this feature:   First, this should only be used when the background color is black.   Using it with any other color background will give unexpected results (strange colors in the image).   Second, when the image is viewed, it will look "wrong".   Only when the alpha channel is applied to the image will it look correct.



Emitter Library Backup

The emitter libraries (IELs) are the heart of Illusion -- without emitters, Illusion is a lot less useful.   You'd certainly hate to lose all of the changes you've made to your libraries... you have been backing them up, right?   Now Illusion will automatically save backups of your libraries.

When changes are made to a library, Illusion will save the library at program exit or before you load a different library.   (You can also use the "Save Library" function to manually save the IEL whenever you want.)   Version 2.0 will also save a backup copy of the library whenever it is saved.   (Note that the backup is saved when the library is saved, not whenever a change to the library is made.)   The backups are kept in the "library_backups" folder, and are renamed incrementally with the extension "bak".   Example: the first time the library "coolstuff.iel" is saved, a backup is made in the "library_backups" folder called "coolstuff_00000.bak".   The next time "coolstuff.iel" is saved a backup called "coolstuff_00001.bak" is saved.   The number portion of the filename will increment indefinitely, but the number of backups of each library that are kept at a time is determined by a preferences setting (defaults to 10).   That means that when the 11th backup of coolstuff is saved, it will be titled "coolstuff_00010.bak", and "coolstuff_00000.bak" will be deleted.

(Hint: When you first run v2.0 of Illusion, you'll want to make sure that all of your IELs are backed up.   A fairly quick way to do this would be to open the properties dialog for an emitter in the library, then close the dialog by clicking OK.   Then load your next IEL and repeat the process.   Clicking OK flags the IEL as changed, so loading the next IEL saves the current one and a backup.)

Restoring a backup

If the unthinkable happens and one of your IELs gets damaged and will no longer load, you'll need to copy the last backup of the IEL from the "library_backups" folder to another folder, rename it from ".bak" to ".iel", then you can load it into Illusion.

A reminder: don't let your IELs get too big.   There is no reason to keep every emitter you have in the same library.   If the IEL is under 5 MB in size, that should be fine.   5-10 MB, I'd worry a little.   (This limit also depends on the amount of system RAM and video RAM your system has.)



Preferences

We just mentioned that the number of emitter backups kept at a time can be set in the Preferences.   There are other new preferences as well:



You can now set the default stage size.   Previously it was fixed at 320 x 240.

You can set the number of backup copies saved for each library.   The default setting of 10 should be sufficient for most users.

You can set the shape preview windows to "show alpha" (checkerboard) or not (black background as in previous versions).

You can also turn off most of the "Delete this point?" confirmation messages.



File Format Changes

With so many changes in version 2.0, the IPF and IEL file formats had to change.   What this means is that IPFs and IELs saved in v2.0 will NOT be able to be loaded by version 1.1.3 (1.1.x)   (Files saved in older versions will always be readable in newer versions.)







end of new features in v2.0 Aal 30 Nov 00