I ordered a backissue of Particle Illusion a while ago and have now tried the program and I can really recommed it for particle effects. It creates 2D images and animations. As an example you could use it for smooke, cosmic clouds, fire ,comets etc. As you can render out with an alpha channel you would be able to use the effect in post render/editing and depending on the possibilities in you renderapplication. In Vue just put the render on an Alpha plane and place it in your scene. It would come in handy for ordinary 2D paintings as well when you want an explosion, commet trail etc. I did however find a little bug (at least I think it is one). In order to render out with transparency (alpha) channel you must save in Targa format but it does not appear in the dropdown of selectable file formats. It was however no problem as just typing it in as in example 'myimagename.tga' worked just as well. There is loads of extra effects to download at there site and you can create you own to. I can really recomend this one. I post a picture later.

Interesting. Do you have a URL so that we can download it or find more information?

Attached Link: http://www.wondertouch.com/default.asp

Can you also please tell us what issue of Digit this was included with? The software maker's website has a demo version available. It's size-restricted and adds a watermark to output.

Xoconostle: Digit Issue 64 Sept 2003 It's the full version of ParticalIllusion SE, and Hellborn's quite right it is very good. Oh, and there's also an upgrade offer to V3.0 Hope this helps

Attached Link: http://www.digitmag.co.uk/backissues/

Sorry about the missing link. I was a bit in a hurry and forgot to past it in. Her's a couple of tests i did using an alpha plane. I still have to figure out if I can get animations into Vue. There should however not be any problems getting a Vue animation int Particle Illusion and then render particles on top of it. There is one layer for this in the SE version while the full version has several layers.

There's a bunch of free extra libraries on the Wondertouch site. Some very good some soso but worth checking out.

Darn, my secret weapon is definitely not so secret any more! ;) I've seen people posting about this Digit Mag version on a lot of differnt boards. Oh well ... This is quite simply the best software for the money in existence. You'll find you don't get a whole lot of work done though ... from playing with all the particles. Truly a great, great, piece of software. -Tim