Creating Dust Effects

Continuing on from my recent work involving compositing in After Effects (here), I decided to explore the different methods of adding dust and/or bokeh effects - either in 3D or 2D based software. My goal was to find the most efficient method of adding the effects that I wanted, without having to learn a large amount of technical skills - allowing me to maintain a focus on the process of visual experimentation.

Initially, I had started by creating dust motes using a particle system in Maya (above). This gives the most flexible result, but is time-consuming. It does factor in object depth however, creating a 3D particle system which objects can be placed inside of.

As a different approach, I tried using the Particular plug-in for After Effects (first used here). This is much simpler to use, and I created a scene with dusty clouds (or could be used as a simple bokeh effect in the background). This created an entirely different result to the Maya particles, as it is not truly 3D, and cannot 'surround' my cell structures. It is much easier to get a nice-looking result quickly though.

The result of my Particular testing can be seen below. It is important to note that I was only testing motion and style, rather than colours, so all of these videos are greyscale purposely;

Finally, I used After Effects to composite the two 'passes' together, out of interest, and decided that although each approach has it's own advantages and disadvantages, they do work well together, because they do different things. The result of this can be seen below;

Although these are relatively short and simple tests, each method can be easily adapted and scaled to fit a larger composition, or longer timeline - something which will be important in the next stages of my projects.