Flames and Smoke...?

[petelms]

Is there some plugins for After Effects that can do realistic looking fire Flames and Smoke? I've seen some really great looking moving fire flames in some logos...how they are made?

Or do I need to use some other app? And which one? :thumbsup:

[Daniel Skubal]

I would be surprised if AE couldn't do smoke and flames... doesn't AE have a particle generator? You could probably find it there. I know Discreet's combustion has both... they're not very good, but better than nothing at all.

Flames are difficult to make... "realistic"

[surf]

AE fires, flames and exposions... :( it has a particle generator, but I was shocked by it. it is really ... ... unreal :)

[kai]

check into Particular from Trapcode... your best bet though is to use actual footage and composite it in

[xl70e3]

Artbeats :)

But get Particular anyway - best particles plugin available for AE, it's just freakin sweet :thumbsup:

[petelms]

Yeah, thanks for the replies guys! I'm wiser now! :laugh:

[Neil Rowe]

..there used to be a 2D/3D volumetric fire/smoke simulation engine plugin called "PYRO" and was distributd by "electricFX" which is a branch of "arete" software who makes the infamous "psunami" and such other simulation software.. heres a link to info on the software.

http://www.areteis.com/press/pressreleases/September_19_2001.htm

here is a link to the plugin for MAYA. but the AE version could do the exact same things.

http://www.areteis.com/products/maya/pyro/gallery.htm

the only problem is.. you cant find it anymore.. the electricfx site is only avaialble to send an e-mail to them. and i cant find anywhere to buy the software anymore. if you find it let me know. its not the greatest in the samples, but when tweaked right it can put out some pretty real looking FX. on the sample page for example the very last sample of smoke is tweaked pretty well. if it was thin and whispy it would look prety photo real. anyway as stated before, artbeats has the goods for alot of fire fx in general.

[Kirk Gillock]

If you prefer real flames and smoke then there's some free DV clips you can use here.

http://www.detonationfilms.com/free_stuff.htm

They have all kinds of royalty free clips of explosions, missles, bullets, smoke, and fire. You can use luma key or keylight to do your compositing.

[Matt Grunau]

No software that exists makes truly believable fire. Some are close, and some 3D particle animators are really getting good, but nothing actually ever looks real. If you want good looking fire elements, do what xl70e3 and PK Gillock suggested. Get real ones or film them yourself.

The only other option is software. A few good (and equally pricey) plugins have been suggested, but you could just go and buy the program Particle Illusion from Wondertouch. That's the new name of the software that was put into Compubstion as their "Particle" system. Costs about 300 bucks, but so do most of the good plug ins, and you get hundreds and hundreds of premade effects, plus the learning curve is easy, and you get a basic knowledge of a particle system hat translates fairly easily into the particle generators all of the major 3D apps can do.

[petelms]

Yeah, REALLY great advices! Thanks! :thumbup:

[petelms]

That Particle Illusion looks great! Just downloaded the demo-version and checking out the presets! Thanks for the link, Rapier_100a! :thumbsup:

[Matt Grunau]

You're Welcome. Just remember, Illusion looks good, but not very real. But, what's really cool is you can set the background color to 50% gray (R127B127G127) and whatever you make on the screen you can desaturate later in AE (or just use black and white particles in Illusion) and you have got youself one HELL of a custom displacment map maker.

Look for tutorials on displacement maps and illusion and you'll find some. Or, whenever I can figure out how to upload to my friggin server I may post somthing.

Glad to have helped.