It’s been snowing here in Ottawa for the past two days (off and on), so I thought I would post this work I did a while back on Carl Squared.

The shots called for snow fall, which anybody can do in Flash alone, but the folks in the animation department decided to give me a crack at having some fun with Maya’s particle system instead.

The particles in the last shot are traveling along a curve that cork-screws across the screen.  I drew the cycling speed lines by hand/tablet in Flash (you see these at the height of the transition.

Although it’s too difficult to see, the snow in the final shot actually collides and disappears at the appropriate depth in the background.  I quickly built a 3D version of the 2D background to give the particle emitter above the camera field a surface point for its particles to disappear into.  Particle wrangling fun!