Improved Procedural
Fire in After Effects
Effects used:
CC Particle Systems II
Trapcode Shine
Time: Approx 10 mins
This is a cool way to make a
quick flame burst, like a flamethrower. If you have a bit of experience with
particle systems you can probably do a lot more with it, if not then just
experiment like I did until you get the look you're after.
Particles
Start by creating an
adjustment layer, and label it 'particles'. Then apply a CC Particle Systems II
Effect to it (Effect>Simulate>CC Particle Systems II)
Set particles to
"Shaded&Faded Sphere"
Set Opacity Map to
"Fade out sharp"
Set Color Map to "Birth
to Origin", and make the birth colour about 65% grey.
Set Transfer Mode to
"Composite" (in the particle rollout, not the layer)
Depending on what you want
the flame to do, you will want to adjust the longevity, the direction and the
all the physics attributes, but for our purposes today:
Longevity should be 0.8
seconds
Animate the birth size so it
starts at zero, gets to it's largest point about frame 5 and then trails off to
zero again at the frame you want it to stop- remember this is not when the
flame will disappear, just when it will stop generating. It will take another
0.8 seconds for the flames to die out.
Death size should be set to zero. This will give the flame it's puffing
look and make it break up as it dies.
Set the gravity to -2. This
will depend on how far you want the flames to rise, and if it's a big fireball
then you may want a higher number, but remember to increase the birth size at
frame 5 so it looks in proportion.
Velocity- like the birth
size, this should start small, increase to it's highest rate about frame 5 and
then tail off to a low number. In this case, start with a value of 0.5,
increase to 1.5, and then tail off to 0.2
At this point you should
have something which looks like smoke, and you can use it like this if you
want. But to take this further and make it into fire, we need to do a few more
things.
Flame colours
Add a Levels effect
(Effect>Color Correction>Levels). Leave it as is for now, but later on
you can use it to adjust the brightness and contrast of the flames; you will
probably need to make them darker once you add the shine effect to give the
flames some detail.
On top of this, add a
Tritone effect (Effect>Color Correction>Tritone). Set the highlights to
bright yellow, set the midtones to a medium orange, and set the shadows to a
dark red. Again you can play with these later to get the look you want.
Glow and movement
Now create a second adjustment
layer, and label it 'distortion'. Add the Shine effect by selecting
effect>trapcode>shine.
By default, Shine starts
with fiery colours, so leave them as is. In the colorize rollout, change the
'Base on' parameter from 'Lightness' to 'Red'.
Set the Ray length to 0.2.
This will effectively control how sharp or blurry your flames are; a higher
value makes them blurrier. Set boost light to 5, and then position the source
point below the bottom of your layer- you want the rays to point upwards, not outwards.
Finally, set the transfer mode to Add.
You're almost there- it
nearly looks like fire. But we need to add the movement of little vortexes in
the flame, so add a Turbulent Displace effect (effect>distort>turbulent
displace).
Set the displacement type to
'twist smoother', the amount to 30 and the size to about 60. Set Complexity to
about 3, but adjust to your taste.
Key the evolution at frame
0, and then set a keyframe at the end. Add 1 revolution per second of
animation- so, if your animation is 3 seconds, the evolution value should read
'3x +000' at the final frame.
Under evolution options, set
pinning to 'Pin Bottom' and tick the box for 'resize layer'.
Now hit play, and you should
have a fairly convincing looking burst of flame!
If you don't have Trapcode
Shine, you can use the stylise>glow effect plus a slight directional blur on
the vertical axis to approximate the look. It won't look as good, but it's
still fairly effective.
I think it's about as good
as you can get without a dedicated flame plugin, but if anyone figures out
something better, please let me know.
