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This is a simple project that shows one example of how expressions can be used to achieve time consuming effects quickly. The aim is to create a stream of binary numbers (ones and zeros) to simulate what every client seems to think the Internet should look like on screen. To do this we are going to use particle playground to produce the stream, the wiggler to add randomness, and finally a simple expression to give the animation realistic depth.

Note: There are presets in After Effects 6.5 and above that can give you a similar effect, using the Advanced Text Engine.

Instructions

1. First open a new composition and call it 'binary particles' and create a black solid (Layer> New > Solid) the size of your comp and call it 'particles' (my comp is PAL 768x576 25 frames per second, but it doesn't matter what size you use).
2. Choose Effect > Simulation > Particle Playground. Those who are familiar with Particle Playground may want to skip to stage 5.
3. Particle Playground by default produces a stream of red dots spurting up like a fountain, this is the cannon effect. You may want to move though the time line to see it's effect.
4. Let's swap those red dots for numbers. In the effects palette click options. In the dialogue that appears click the button 'edit cannon text'. This is the text that will be substituted for the particles. In the text field type '10' it doesn't matter what font you use, I've used Arial, then check the box for loop text and the radial button for random order. The loop button means that we won't rum out of numbers after 2 particles, but instead they will repeat (1010101010, etc.). The random button means just that, the numbers will be used randomly, so we won't see a repetitive pattern. Click OK.
5. You should now have a rather underwhelming fountain of small red ones and zeros on whatever your background color is. Before we set the cannon up change the background color of your composition to black, and the color of your particles to white (under cannon in the effects controls).
6. So we can see our particles better change the font size to 28 (under cannon in the effects controls).
7. Change the cannon direction to 90‘ so the particles fire left to right. Change the gravity force to 0 so the particles don't fall to the floor. Click the Position crosshairs and drag the particle creation point over to the left of the screen (or type 0 for the first position value).
8. Rather than the hose pipe effect we have at the moment we want particles flowing across the whole of the screen. Change the cannon barrel radius to the height of your comp (mine is 576).
9. We're now half way there, we have a wall of lowing numbers, but there is no depth, all of the numbers are the same size and traveling at the same speed. To add random size we are going to use the wiggler. Create a key frame at the beginning of your comp for font size, and another the same at the end of your comp. Select both key frames and choose Window> the Wiggler leave the frequency set at 5 and change the magnitude to 20. This means the wiggler will create 5 new key frames per second between the two selected with random values with up to 20 units variance. Click apply.
10. We now have a realistic variance in size but not speed. If these particles were traveling through 3 dimensional space the small particles, the ones furthest away should appear to be moving slower. This is where expressions come in. We are going to create an expression that links the speed of the particles to there size. Alt click the stop watch for cannon velocity. Drag the pick-whip for velocity to the font size value and release. This give the effect of the larger particles moving faster.
11. I found that the particles were a little to slow for my taste, so do we have to change all those font size key frames to get the velocity to change? No, expressions understand simple mathematics so if you wand to get the particles to go 10 times faster simply type *10 at the end of the expression. It looks like this. effect"Particle Playground").param("Particle Radius")*10
    
12. Click the motion blur switch for the layer and preview or render.