I live in Canada and the magazine is PC Utilities. I am sure the magazine would also be available in the U.S. I believe the magazine is an import, but not sure from where. Our local magazine store (and I believe Chapters) carries it all the time.

Thanks! will look out for it.

Hi Al - which version is that? Particle Illusion SE 2.0 was a cover disk in the UK over a year ago!

Ian G.

Hi Ian:

It is Particle Illusion 2.0 SE.

It is kind of funny as I just spent 3-4 months trying to get a copy of the video magazine (Grafik & Video (German) Winter issue) that had PI 2 SE on its cover CD. Received it about 3 weeks ago all the way from Germany (and the text is in German too) and now it comes out in Canada...

Oh well, love the software and have downloaded all the available emitter libraries from Wondertouch.

Al

OK, I'll bite.... what is Particle Illusion?

Probably the best thing to do is to go to Particle Illusion and check it out.

In short though, it allows you to add some really cool special effects to your videos like fireworks, smoke, explosions, water effects, logo effects, well all sorts of things. In addition, you can create your own effects and particle emitters as well.

Particle Illusion has been used in TV shows like Start Trek Voyager, Star Trek Enterprise, Sport Shows and movies like Hellboy, The Manchurian Candidate, The Italian Job and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

Anyone in the US know of a chain that carries this magazine? To press my luck, anyone know of a place in the San Francisco Bay Area?

I just got back from my local Barnes and Noble , they have it. But they also have a better deal,the same publisher has a magazine called PCtools. Issue 18 (on the shelf now) has the same program and also tons more video shareware and freeware stuff as it is their "Movie Making edition"

Excellent. I am going to see if I can track down a copy of PCTools and see what else there is.

Thanks shmulb...
Al

Hi shmulb:

Found Issue 18 of PCTools and did buy it as it contained a lot of interesting software products. It comes with four full programs for free (Movie Edit Silver, Pure Motion EditStudio 2, Advanced X Video Converter and PI 2 SE) along with tons of shareware and freeware video and audio software.

For those who are interested in the PC Utilities magazine, the issue to look for is Issue 52.

Guess I have to try Barnes & Noble - the local Border's store did not have it.

Found it at B&N, too. Thanks for the tip!

Bob

This thing is hardly "free".... the mag was US $12.00 at Barnes & Noble. The contents of the mag are brief blurbs about some of the applications on the discs. I have not yet installed any of the software, but there is a warning that many will produce an error under WindowsXP unless a compatibility flag is enabled for the app to run as if the OS was Win 98, so many of the apps are probably ancient.

All that said, there seems to be some nifty utilities on the discs, although, my guess is that most are downloadable for free.

Particle Illusion SE costs $99. So, I guess the subject line should read "Particle Illusion SE for 87.8% off". Close enough to free for me!

Sorry if I mislead any of you, but $99 USD is like a Gazillion CAD. That and I usually buy a lot of these magazines anyway and didn't factor that into the cost. If something extra comes with a magazine than I think of that as a freebie.

...Oh... I am still running Windows 98SE (he says in a low hushed voice) :-)

Al

Don't worry Al, you are not the only one running Win98SE. Even on my new(er) computer, I plan on dual booting Win2k since I have a large number of apps that either don't run or run like crap under Win2k/XP.

I didn't mean to imply that I personally felt misled. I do not buy a lot of mags, and when I do, they are just a couple of bucks. I still bought it, and I'm sure a single use of particle illusion will justify the cost, plus any use of the multitude of other utils on the discs will be an additional bonus.

OK, I finally got a chance to check PI. Pretty neat effects. Looking through the list of effects on the version that came with PC Tools, vs. the ones listed in the tutorial makes me wonder if the PC Tools version is even more limited than the normal SE that retails for US$99.

Anyway, my videos are usually home video material - kids, parties, holidays, etc. I don't have a lot of explosions, fireworks, smoke, etc.....

So, what else are people using PI for if not for these sci-fi special effects?

Hi djcc:

There are a lot of other emitter libraries that you can download from the Wondertouch website. If you download all of the libraries, you will end up with hundreds and hundreds of different effects.

I have used PI for sci-fi f/x as you mentioned, but have also used it to enhance logos and titles.

I found the other emitter libraries and took a look at a few of them. Would love to see more examples of logos, titles, and other "non-sci-fi" uses, but they seem to be limited on the wonder touch site.

If you go to this link on Chienworks website, there is a video clip that I uploaded that shows PI in use on the logo. It uses a small emitter to highlight the 'S' when the two halves of the logo come together.

When you get to the page, you may want to right-click on the video clip and do a Save As, then play it from your hard drive. For some strange reason, when I play the clip in Windows Media Viewer on-line, it shows as only 31 seconds but in reality the clip is 1:13 in length when played off-line.