Cycore (CC) Effects are a set of excellent effects that come bundled as standard with After Effects CS3 and above. The installation of these FX is however, optional. Most people install them at the time of installing the main application. If you don’t have them installed, you need to go back to your original install disk (or download) and install them to be able to use certain projects. (All my projects that use Cycore FX, state this in the item description.)

To check whether you have Cycore installed, open your copy of After Effects, create a new composition (Composition -> New composition… ) , then create a solid layer (Layer -> New -> Solid… ) , then go to Effect -> Blur & Sharpen. If you see any items in the submenu that begin with CC, such as CC Radial Blur, then you have Cycore installed.

If you are using a demo version of After Effects, you may find that the Cycore Effects are not included.

Trapcode Particular is an excellent third party plug-in for After Effects. It is a particle system and has many advantages over the built in Cycore Particle World. It renders faster, has more better internal particle compositing, more full featured physics, can handle depth of field, can be embedded with other 3D layers and so on.

The drawback is that it costs $399.

Please note though, that unless you specifically want to change the paths of the particle swooshes in Dynamo logo, you don’t need Trapcode Particular or Cycore Particle World. For most needs, the prerendered version will work perfectly. You can still change color and speed.

You can find out more about Trapcode Particular here.