umm.. for simple shit like this, try particle Illusion SE

for intense particle manipulation try PI3 (allows for blockig and deflecting etce tc, so gold dust can interact with the footage..

great for snowfflakes on falling heads..
lol

How about old fashion method .......

Black cloth backdrop. Lights setup near a table. Silver or gold metalic confetti
you get at party stores for graduations. Video tape being sprinkled.

I have Caligari TrueSpace so you don't think I am that far behind the times.

A man after my own heart.
I've said this before but nothing beats the fun of trying doing things for real. Sure it mightn't work all the time but for enjoyment it sure beats pushing 1s and 0s around and in general nothing looks as real as the real deal.
Which is kind of funny because a couple of days ago I tried doing some compositing in Vegas of some freebies from Artbeats. The compositing was a snap, making the thing look believable though may take me years to master in the digital realm but a good starting point is looking at the real thing in the real world.

Bob.

Thanks for the input fellas

Now after googling this - it appears to be a reasonable question with the pros using everything from fibre glass to atomised oil!!

I'll give the black backdrop a go but being really dumb I have no idea where to start in Pixelan or PI - any suggestions?

Thanks

particle illlusion can be found here

wondertouch.com

Se is the basic, and PI3 is the higher end which has inbuilt compositing, blocking, delfecting etc etc

I downloaded the trial of the Particle Illusions 3, which is a fully functional version for 30 days. It seems to be really cool but....I have no idea how to get it to work with Vegas. I'm sure there's a way but it seems pretty complicated. The manual makes it sound as if it's for Adobe After Effects. Wish I could get it to work because it seems to do some pretty cool effects.

It doesn't 'work' with Vegas, use it standalone.

Particle Illusion is awesome. Go to the website http://www.wondertouch.com/index.aspPI Home[/link] and be sure to check out Support-Tutorials and the Quick Start Guide. You'll also want the free Download-Free Apps-Show IEL which will let you preview the hundreds and hundreds of presets. You can also go to Download-Emitter Libraries and get their up-to-date collection along with a SEARCHABLE catalog to narrow into your particular particle. (ha)

We've been promised avi output with alpha, for now you probably want to output a png image sequence to import into Vegas. You'll need to remember to set the media properties alpha when you import the sequence into Vegas. It works like a charm once you've spent a little while with it.

Darryl

I really would like it to work. Did everything the tutorial said, but I can't get the video file to load. mpeg files definately don't work, in fact they won't even show up. AVI files won't load and give me error messages. Apparently I need to install something called panasonic dv codec. I'm a bit nervous about installing this because I've heard some not so great stories from some people after installing this codec. Why do things have to be so complicated? Seems like someone could come up with an easier way to add these effects.

Mark

MarkCC777:

Which program demo are you using particleIllusion full or SE?

I tried the full version and when you click on the Red dot to Save Output
the AVI options asked for the normal Cinepak compressor.

I prefer to import the sequence of stills in png format because you can save
the alpha channel.

I'm using the PI 3 demo. I think I figured somethings out. I kind of understand how it works now. But now I need to figure out how to make it work in Vegas properly. All I get are a bunch of still images. This is obviously not what I want. Tech support said that there is some option in Vegas that I need to click on, but he wasn't sure how to do that. I still can't do anything with video tracking since I can't seem to import any video files into PI3. It always says that it AVI cannot be used because it is not supported. I'll send another e-mail to PI3 tech support about this. Just seems like it should be easier. Thanks for all the help though.

Mark

That is how I do it using Caligari TrueSpace. No there was not a way of placing your
talent video behind the FX. (Sorry it took me a day or two to figure out what you
were trying) You can take a few stills from your video and using a paint program
figure out the X and Y locations. Then set keyframes and positions to come close
in PI3.

Good luck.

I have now worked it all out and got it working - we went for a shower of gold stars by adapting the falling leaves - thanks everyone.

PI is awesome.

You have to remember to set the Alpha media properties to straight or something - why is this? One time I did it and din't have to set anything and all was ok - strange.