Well the title says it all, does anyone know any products like Particle Illusion that free?

Cheers
Jon

Good question.... this is not the same thing since its a visual effects tool:

http://jahshaka.org/

Before I bought Particle Illusion, I searched far and wide on the web and found nothing similar that was freeware.

Attached Link: http://thebest3d.com/pdp/index.html

Thanks for the comments, I will check the link and have a look.

Cheers
Jon

Quote - Good question.... this is not the same thing since its a visual effects tool:

http://jahshaka.org/

Well I've dl'd both it and the player, but prior to installing anything I joined up and read the forum re: installation and find no one can get it to work...Have you managed to, and if so...is there a trick we should know?, is it worth the effort? The reason I ask is I am cramped for space on this computer and would like to have a heads up if it's gonna be an exercise in futility...if I wanted that I could just read a newspaper....LOL

I used it many times ago and works fine... its just a little strange at first sight. Now I have the FXhome software and dont use it anymore.

I got Particle Illusion 2 SE, free, from a magazine years ago, woot! ;)

Nothing touches it, IMHO.

however, three plugins for Photoshop, 2 that wold be hard to get now, do help:

GENESIS, company no longer sells it, creates awesome lens and gas flares etc.

ULEAD GIF-X 2.0, has aweosme lens flares, lights, beams and the best lightning I've ever seen. Don't know if it's sold as a stand alone, anymore, it was bundled into Ulead's paint program.

KNOLL LIGHT FACTORY, expensive, but has lot of great light effects.

Not sure if this helps but possibly various VJ software, they are designed mainly to mix video however some have effects and particle type stuff so they may be of interest possibly.

Well, trueSpace is now free. Doesn't it have particles? Perhaps you can composite with Vue?

Attached Link: Good YouTube Quartz Composer tutorial

"Quartz Composer" doesn't look anything like Particle Illusion -- but the underlying technology can produce similar results. Quartz is Apple's API for accessing OpenGL hardware for sprite graphics. QC is a node based application, similar to Shake, Combustion or the Vue Advanced Function editor. . . that's a very different paradigm from Particle Illusion, but the underlying idea is the same-- push bitmaps to the graphics card, and use OpenGL compositing modes to produce images.

For examples in use see: Quartz Candy,   Quartz Compositions, and Apple's Quartz Composer Developer page