Are U Experienced (in Boris BCC Particle Illusion)? Composite Confused

Soniclight-2.0 wrote on 11/18/2021, 12:21 AM



Before I get into flesh out my question in more detail, ​below is my abridged query over at the PI forum at Boris FX with reply from Alan Lorence (who invented PI and with whom I've communicated with off and on since my days with PI v.3 in early 2000s):
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I have BCC Continuum for Vegas Pro 19 so have full Particle Illusion as plugin on Windows 10.

In PI-3, one could export just the particles as a non-intense alpha PNG sequence; I would then import those into Vegas so I could go to town on further color corrections, etc.
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Alan_Lorence replied:

When you’re using PI as a plug-in in Vegas, the concept of “render to file” is not applicable – the plugin renders directly back to wherever you applied it. It replaces the “render to file, then import” of the old pI3 workflow.

In Vegas look in the “Composite” group of parameters after applying PI. The “Composite Style” parameter is the one you’ll want – if “Direct (Classic)” doesn’t work for you, try “Apply + Alpha Mode” and then you get a range of other options.
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Seems straight forward, on hiatus from my "serious amateur" video editing for a number of years, I only upgraded to VP-19 from 10 within the last 2 months and it's a learning curve to get used to such a jump* in versions in terms of workflow and GUI. (* I began with VP-6 in 2006, and the GUI never changed much).

On top of that, I'm new to Boris FX and having difficulty learning their layout of settings, etc. In short, I'm panicking a bit for I'm not understanding things I wish or feel I should.

Now to the compositing question itself:

The opening screenshot is from an older pre-VP-19, pre-BCC project done in VP-10. The top 4 tracks are said .PNG alpha files exported from PI-3; in this project I stacked more than one of the same sequence to add depth and particles size variation. The one directly over the footage is color corrected+curved in Vegas.

Essentially I would like to have the equivalent of separate track/s for the alpha particles-only portion of the render done in PI over the footage in there, but for the life of me, I still can't figure out how.

Whenever I've used compositing, it's always been through the track compositing choices as stacked tracks, not editing or tweaking an alpha channel within an event. Which seems to be the way to do so with BCC PI in VP?

I briefly and only once saw the two settings Alan mentioned ("Direct (Classic) and "Apply + Alpha Mode" and can't remember in what area of Vegas. Using Properties on any video event, there are the Straight and Premultiplied alpha choices, but I don't know how to apply those if even relevant to this situation.

So...

I'd really appreciate step-by-step advice on how to get back to being able to work on the particles in Vegas for that's where I can give them some more umph and shine.

Thank you.

Comments

Grazie wrote on 11/18/2021, 1:47 AM

@Soniclight-2.0 - Yeah…..? OK, are you using pI as a direct Plugin, into VP? Or are you generating pI from outside VP and then importing?

Soniclight-2.0 wrote on 11/18/2021, 2:32 AM

In-Vegas as plugin BCC v.2021.5 for the free standalone PI does not allow one to put footage in background.

Grazie wrote on 11/18/2021, 3:21 AM

Just to reconfirm, you are using pI as a Plugin inside of VP, nothing external?

Former user wrote on 11/18/2021, 3:27 AM

@Soniclight-2.0 Is this what you're looking for?

Alan's comment 'In Vegas look in the “Composite” group of parameters'

the parameters are the controls for that fx in Video Event FX.👍

Soniclight-2.0 wrote on 11/18/2021, 12:37 PM

@Former user - Yes, that's the one. Thanks.

The two-screenshots show Direct (Classic) on top, Alpha + Apply Mode on bottom.



That said, it still doesn't solve the dilemma of being able to do what I used to - apply whatever Vegas or other FX to only the particles, not the footage over which they are. The Alpha + Apply Mode offers more tweaks in that GUI, but anything I apply in either mode always affects both particles and footage.

There has got to be some way to do this. I'm probably missing something rather obvious.

@Grazie - To answer your Q, nothing external. All done in Vegas (footage editing and PI launched within).

Former user wrote on 11/18/2021, 1:02 PM

The fx on the top of the Video Event FX can be moved in order, but whatever is last (nearest the blue & red fx symbol) will affect the ones before
I think you would need to put your PI on one track above your footage track, Apply + Alpha Mode & apply the other fx you want to add to each individually,

 

Soniclight-2.0 wrote on 11/18/2021, 1:04 PM

@Former user - I'm having a double take - you replied to me on the same Q over at Boris, to which I just replied (I'll try your second workaround). Thanks.

Former user wrote on 11/18/2021, 1:14 PM

Yeah, last comment on here, we'll leave it on Boris's forum 👍😁, try Intense in the particles settings in PI if it looks a little drab when applying as Alpha.

Soniclight-2.0 wrote on 11/19/2021, 2:32 PM

Yes, it is essentially but not exclusively a Boris/PI subject, but I might as well paste the following application of your suggestion/solution for it could be of use to someone else at some point for and/or beyond PI.
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Wel, @Gid, gave #2 a shot and we've got a winner: 

-- Top track with particles in Source Alpha composite, Video Event FX set to Alpha + Apply Mode, Opacity: 100.

-- Bottom track with footage in 3D Alpha composite, Video Event FX in Alpha set to Direct (Classic), Opacity: 0

Result: 

Very close to what it should look like as single event/track - just a bit of hue difference due to the Screen mode, but that can be adjusted.  Able to make particles pop a bit more with Unsharp Mask, and now I have the whole palette of FX to use on the particles as desired.

Just discovered Beat Reactor down in the PI Vegas Video FX options which opens up a whole new fun-world for me to make particles do some interesting things since I make my own music (using Steinberg Cubase).

Former user wrote on 11/19/2021, 3:24 PM

In that case i'll inc my reply 😁

These are old videos but still relevant to Beat Reactor 
This one first to create the external audio file