• Adobe After Effects

  Rooting a smoke trail to footage (Particular, AE CS6)

  Posted by Ben Kahane-rapport on March 25, 2015 at 10:01 pm

  Hey all,

  I’m trying to animate a rocket launching into the atmosphere. It’s a POV from the rocket, looking down. We have live footage from satellite images ascending into space, and the column of the rocket obscures part of the shot. I have a stream of smoke being emitted downwards from behind the column towards earth. However, the footage of the descending earth is really shaky and even spins multiple times (on purpose).

  How can I make this look realistic? I need the tail end of the smoke (the closest smoke to earth) to be rooted in place as the rocket ascends,as if its at the launch site. I’m thinking I need to motion track the footage, but I can’t figure it out because I can only whip that to the emitter, not the already emitted.

  I hope that makes sense!

  Thanks in advance!

  Michael Szalapski replied 11 years, 5 months ago 2 Members · 1 Reply
• 1 Reply

• 

  Michael Szalapski

  March 26, 2015 at 9:32 pm

  If the camera in AE is moving and the emitter is moving with it, you’re golden. How are you getting the movement in the scene? If it’s an AE camera move, simply make the Particular emitter a light that’s parented to the camera.

  – The Great Szalam
  (The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

  No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

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