Attached Link: Good YouTube Quartz Composer tutorial

Yes, actually . . .there's fantastic free software, with a catch-- its  for Mac users only.

"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