In order to assist my fellow users in
harnessing the full power and potential of the particle engine in
EffectsLab and VisionLab, I have put together this epic tutorial which
takes you through all of the particle engine features while creating a
realistic fire effect.
Click the image for a preview of the finished shot:
In this tutorial, we will cover only the
flames which are used in the above clip. I hope to cover the smoke aspects
in a future tutorial.
Tutorial guide
Standard text will explain the various
functions of the particle engine.
Bold text will be used for the specific instructions involved in
creating our Fire effect.
Red text will be
used when we are discussing the physics and other behavioral aspects of
real fire. Understanding how real fire moves is crucial to creating a
convincing effect.
Getting started
First you'll need the this background
image. Once you have downloaded it, start a new project, import the
image and place it on the timeline.
We will place our fire so that
it appears to be coming out the low foreground window. Increase the Scale
until the image is wide enough to fill the frame, and adjust it until you
like the framing.
Now add a bare particle effect engine to the
timeline, and let's take a look at the controls. I suggest making the
effect 100 frames long, but you can use any length you want. More frames
will take longer to render, of course.
The toolbox will change to display all the
particle engine controls.
The Texture Browser
Here you have full control over the most
defining visual aspect of your particle effect.
Introducing textures
Textures are images that are used to draw each
individual particle that comes from your emitter. When you add a bare
particle effect to your timeline (ie, not a preset), it has no textures
applied.
Instead there is a red cross placeholder
marking the location of each particle. Once you import some textures, the
red crosses will be replaced by the images.
All of the textures you import are shown in a
list in the Texture Browser. You can import new textures
by clicking the blue folder icon.
Clicking on the white 'i' symbol next to each
texture name will display a preview of the texture image. To remove a
texture, right-click on its name in the list and select “Delete”. As of
version 937, you can have up to 10 textures in each particle effect.
There are several
parts to a burning fire. The main part of the fire is very bright, nearly
white, and has a fairly constant mass, which moves about a bit. Beyond
that, there are the seperate flames that lick up and outward. These are
typically not quite as bright, with a bit more orange, red or yellow color
to them. In addition to that, there will be sparks and embers that spit up
out of the fire, or are carried up by the rising hot air
currents.
For the Flame effect, I used 5 textures which I created myself. You
can download them
from here, then import them into your effect. Four of the textures I
used are flames, created from photos of my fireplace. The other is a
sparks texture, to serve as the rising sparks and embers.
