Introduction
What are the Professional Emitters?
The Professional Emitters (or "Pro Emitters") are a series of emitter libraries for
particleIllusion 3.0. They were created by three of the leading particleIllusion artists
in the world: Tom Granberg, Sasha Milica, and Phalkanubba Rath. These emitters are meant to
supplement the emitter libraries that are included (and released monthly) for pIllusion,
providing some of the most complex, artistic, realistic, and creative effects available.
There are 6 Pro Emitter Libraries available, each covering a different theme (for the most part),
and each containing 30 emitters. Like all particleIllusion emitters, these emitters are
fully customizeable, and this documentation provides ideas on how to make interesting variations
of many of the Pro Emitters.
How are the Pro Emitters different from the free emitters available with particleIllusion?
Emitters tend to exhibit a style that is particular to every artist that creates emitters -- each
artist tends to have their own techniques of emitter creation, which can lead to some very unique effects that
other artists have not yet discovered. The emitters included with particleIllusion were primarily developed by
a single artist (Alan Lorence), so are somewhat limited in style (after creating over 1300 emitters, fresh
ideas are harder to come by).
The Pro Emitters were created by independent particleIllusion artists, so are full of fresh ideas. In addition,
these artists have spent many hours refining their pIllusion skills, so have produced effects that
in many cases are much more complex that any pIllusion emitters that have been released to date.
The main rule in creative emitter design is: choose particle shape (images) wisely! The correct particle shape choice
can make the difference between a truly fantastic emitter, and a mediocre (or useless) emitter. The Pro
Emitter artists have learned this rule, and these libraries contain many creative, interesting, and useful shapes
that can be reused in your other emitters -- another advantage of the Pro Emitter Libraries.
The Artists
Phalkanubba Rath
Originally from Battambang, Cambodia, Phalkanubba is now a student studying
photography in Long Beach, California. In his spare time he’s a freelance
artist in media arts and animation, and has done work for a large number of
companies including KBN TV (Khmer Broadcasting Network television) and CAM-TV
(Cambodian television). With no formal background in arts or graphic school
training, he is mostly self-taught, and uses particleIllusion for
"everything". Has been using particleIllusion since it was first released (as
"Illusion 1.0").
The "Abstract" and "Text and Logo" Pro Emitter Libraries represent only a
small portion of his work – he has hundreds of these types of emitters that he
has created over the years.
Alan says: "When Phalkanubba first sent me a sample of his "Abstract"
emitters, I was amazed – I didn’t think that such organic and flowing effects
were possible with particleIllusion. What makes his emitters even more
special is the fact that most of them continually change over time, often for
30 seconds or longer!"
Sasha Milica
Sasha lives in St. Petersburg, Russia, and his artistic training was in oil
painting. He does not work in the visual effects or motion graphics
industries, but instead uses particleIllusion as a creative outlet – it’s his
hobby now (or "passion" as he puts it). Sasha often spends his evening hours
in front of particleIllusion, creating emitter variation after emitter
variation. It’s this passion for creating with particleIllusion that has lead
to his discovery of some really nice techniques, as is seen most prominently
in the "Artistic Backgrounds" library.
Alan says: "Sasha experiments with particleIllusion more than anybody else
that I’m aware of – myself included. He’ll often send me emitters with simple
names such as "1147" and "2455" – I believe he just assigns the next available
number to an emitter and moves on, and probably has thousands of emitters in
his libraries."
Tom Granberg
Tom is a Norwegian graphic artist who now lives in Phoenix, Arizona producing
games at Rainbow Studios. Tom’s strength is in creating realistic emitters,
and his particleIllusion explosions are some of the best available. The
emitters he creates are often very complex, but the visual results are
amazing. You can see both the game design and graphic artist influences in
his work.
Alan says: "Tom has been using particleIllusion longer than anybody except me
-- he was the first "out-of-house" beta tester for particleIllusion (Illusion
1.0), and was the first to show what particleIllusion could do in the hands of
a creative artist, producing a realistic smoke trail with what we thought at
the time was a tool for producing sparkles only. He also creates a wide range
of effects, which is why I couldn't come up with good descriptive names for his libraries,
so I just ended up naming his libraries 'Eclectic'."
Documentation Overview
This documentation has 2 main uses: first as a catalog, but second (and more importantly) as a guide to each emitter.
It may do one or more of the following for each emitter (where applicable):
Note that you can toggle the index between text (showing the names of the emitters in each library) and
icons (showing a thumbnail image of the emitters in each library).
Also note that the documentation for all 6 Pro Emitter Libraries is provided even if you've
only purchased a single Pro Emitter Library.
What do the weird letters in the emitter names mean?
Those letters (for instance, "::pe TG::") are included in each emitter name to indicate
that they are Pro Emitters, and also to show which artist created them. "pe" designates
"Pro Emitters", and "SM" designates that Sasha Milica created it, "TG" Tom Granberg,
and "PR" Phalkanubba Rath. The "::" is just used to visually set the letters off and
further indicate that they are Pro Emitters.