Trapcode Particular easily bested any native particle system that After Effects offered. That was years and years ago though. Today the Trapcode Suite and Particular shows their age. Still useful and quite capable, the Particular plugin for After Effects has seen little development over the last ten years. Other plugins have in the mean time, filled the gap to offer more modern interpretations and workflows for working with particles in Ae. One of them is Superluminal’s Stardust plugin.
Stardust offers a nondestructive node based workflow, and a unified 3D space for working. That all sounds great, but how does that all compare to something like Trapcode Particular and the Trapcode Suite?
James Ramirez, also known as FriedPixels, ventures with a little comparison and a nice introductory overview for StarDust. “I’m just generally excited about Stardust and want to share that with the community. This is by no means a bash to the trapcode suite, anyone who knows my work knows that I live and breath that suite, this is just a comparison look.” Ramirez notes.
The overview covers everything from emitters to fields and more, with some nice comparisons between the two heavy-hitter particle plugins in the after effects world.
