Particle shapes

#Trace from

Trace from sits in the Shape card of a particle layer. It has five tabs: Prompt, Shapes, Image, SVG and Data. Each layer opens on the tab its shape came from (a generator opens Shapes, a traced image opens Image, and so on), or on Prompt, and it remembers the tab you last picked on that layer. Switching tabs only changes what the panel shows; your current shape stays until you generate a new one. Data has its own page, Animated data and charts. Drawing a shape by hand is its own card, Draw, on Draw paths and masks; a mask drawn there fills the layer's shape, and Shape says so.

Shapes, Image, SVG and Data share one Generate formation button, with Clear beside it to go back to a plain field. Generate and Clear change only the shape: Motion's Displace and a drawing's Follow or Emit stay as they are. The status line under them says "Formation active · N points" once a shape is in place.

What happens when you generate

A shape is a set of home positions. Each particle is given one and sits on it; it does not fly in. So that the shape reads straight away, generating also:

• calms the forces, leaving only a gentle float, and tells you it did so;
• sets Fill canvas to 90 and Fan out to 0;
• raises the layer's Count to at least the number of points in the shape.

Any Displace you already set on Motion stays on. If the layer has more particles than the shape has points, the extra particles reuse points in turn. If you lower Count afterwards, the shape is thinned evenly from the full-resolution original, so it keeps its outline rather than losing one end.

Fill canvas and Fan out

Fill canvas (0 to 120, typed values up to 500) sizes the shape. At 100 the shape spans the shorter side of the frame, so it fits every format the same way; above 100 it overshoots the frame. Fan out (0 to 100) turns the whole shape about its centre, and 100 is half a turn. Both take effect immediately, without regenerating.

If the layer is switched to follow its forces only, the shape is parked rather than lost. The card says so, and Use this shape puts the particles back on it.

#Prompt

Prompt is the quickest way to a shape you cannot easily draw. Type what you want and click Generate. There are ready-made chips to start from: a ring, a bird, a house, rotate 360, pulse and scatter.

A prompt can ask for two kinds of thing, and one prompt can ask for both:

• A formation such as "a ring" or "a soaring bird" becomes an outline of up to 200 points for the particles to settle on. Open-ended requests are steered towards clear structure: rings, lattices, spokes, grids, spirals and closed curves, because those read at a glance in a moving ad.
• A motion such as "rotate 360", "pulse outward" or "scatter" becomes a per-particle move on top of the physics. A motion is only visible across several particles, so on a Count of 1 the panel offers a Raise Count button.

The AI runs once, when you click Generate. The result is saved on the layer as plain points and settings, so playback, scrubbing and the exported video never call the AI again and always match. The button then reads Regenerate, and the status line shows what the layer is guided by, with "Physics still runs underneath" to remind you the forces still apply. Clear returns the layer to free physics. Generating uses credits.

Tips

• Name the silhouette, not the scene: "a hummingbird in profile" gives a cleaner outline than "a garden with birds".
• Ask for geometry by name when you want precision ("three concentric rings", "a five-point star").
• For an exact logo or product outline, trace it with Image or SVG instead: a prompt gives an interpretation, not your artwork.

#Shapes

Shapes bakes a mathematical pattern: exact, symmetrical and identical on every render. Pick a generator, set its dials and click Generate formation. There is no randomness, so what you see in the preview is exactly what exports.

The generators

• Phyllotaxis: the sunflower-seed spiral, with Count (20 to 800, 220 by default) and Scale (20 to 100).
• Spiral: Turns (1 to 8), Rotation (0 to 360) and a Type of Archimedean, Logarithmic, Galilean or Lituus.
• Hex Grid: Rows and Cols (2 to 20 each), up to 400 points. This is the lattice a new particle layer starts on.
• Lissajous: a looping knot set by Freq A and Freq B (1 to 9 each).
• Sphere: a wireframe globe with Lat (4 to 24) and Lon (4 to 30) lines, up to 400 points.

Spiral and Lissajous also have a Points slider (20 to 800, 200 by default). Seed (1 to 999) turns Phyllotaxis, shifts the phase of a Lissajous knot and rotates the Sphere; Spiral uses its Rotation dial instead and Hex Grid ignores it. Switching generator resets the dials to that generator's defaults, and the dials only apply when you click Generate formation.

Once a shape is in place, Shapes and Image show a Reveal checkbox: the shape draws itself on as the scene plays, in the order Motion's Order sets. It is the same reveal as SVG and Data's Draw-on reveal, and many recipes turn it on, so a recipe's shape can be regenerated here without losing it.

Worked example

A 16:9 fintech banner with a slowly turning globe of data points behind the headline.

1. Add a particle layer and open Shapes under Trace from.
2. Pick Sphere, set Lat to 13 and Lon to 22, and click Generate formation.
3. Drop Fill canvas to about 70 so the globe sits behind the copy rather than filling the frame.
4. Add Motion and pick Orbit with a low Amount, so the points shimmer around their places without breaking the globe.
5. Add Gradient Morph with two brand colours so the globe shifts colour across the scene.

#Image

Image turns a picture into dots. It uses the same image slot as the layer, so an image you already loaded on the layer is ready here, and dropping one here fills the layer's slot. If the layer image changes after you generate, a note asks you to click Generate formation again to re-fit.

The controls

• Style: Silhouette (filled) fills the solid shape of the image with dots, favouring dark areas and boosting outlines and inner edges. Edge (outline) traces only the outline. Transparent pixels never get dots, so a cutout with a transparent background traces cleanly.
• Points (12 to 800, 160 by default) is how many dots make the shape. Uploading a fresh image raises it to 400 so the shape reads straight away. More points trace finer detail.
• Image opacity (0 to 100, 0 by default) shows the source image itself beneath the particles, steadily across the whole scene. At 0 only the dots form the shape.

The dots are spread evenly rather than clumping, and the image keeps its proportions. It is the best route for a real product or a photographed logo, because the shape is your own picture.

Tips

• A high-contrast image on a transparent or plain light background traces best; busy photos give busy dots.
• Use Edge on bold, simple shapes (a bottle, a shoe, a logo mark) and Silhouette on shapes that need their inner detail.
• A generated cutout works well here: make one with AI image generation, then trace it.

#SVG

SVG traces vector artwork. Every path, line and polygon in the file is sampled along its length, and the points are shared out in proportion to each path's length, so long strokes and short details both keep their shape. This is the most precise way to put a logo into particles.

How to use it

1. Drop an SVG into the slot, or type a description into the field below and click Generate SVG (or press Enter). A generated SVG is traced for you straight away; generating one uses credits.
2. Set Points (12 to 800, 80 by default; an upload raises it to 400) and click Generate formation.
3. Use the eye button to hide the source SVG on the canvas. The particles keep the shape.

Draw-on reveal (trace the path as it plays) makes the particles appear along the paths as the scene plays, like a pen drawing the logo. Turning it on also hides the source SVG.