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  • Smoke Text Question – Not in FAQ section of forum

    Posted by Rob Hindley on March 9, 2007 at 8:35 am

    I am wanting to create a thin stream of cigarette smoke that spells out a word as it streams into the air and fades.
    As opposed to transitioning text to smoke. And not using a displacement map – this just ‘projects’ the word on top of the smoke.

    I own the excellent Trapcode Particular and Pyropack.

    Any ideas please?

    Rob Hindley replied 19 years, 6 months ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
  • 2 Replies
  • Mylenium

    March 9, 2007 at 10:40 am

    Sounds more or less like a simple matter of finding the right font/ typeface. Not sure what look you have in mind, but for a nice, pleasant look probably a Gothic type with thin fine lines or a script font would look best. You then only need to overlay it onto your existing smoke using Add or Screen blend mode and take down opacity until it begins to meld with the smoke. A slight blur mikght also help. If you are looking for the opposite and want to cretae the feeling of smoking being bad (which it is of course) use heavy fonts and use darker colors or aggressive blendmodes such as Difference for instance.

    For the smoke itself simply create a hollow circle as a custom particle, feather/ blur it slightly, take down the opacity until it is barely visible and use as a custom particle in Particular. Use the Add mode, so when the particles overlap the strings of smoke will begin to manifest themselves. For the motion turn down velocity and work with a negative Gravity and Turbulence.

    Mylenium

    [Pour Myl

  • Rob Hindley

    March 12, 2007 at 2:39 am

    Merci for your comprehensive reply!

    I will try your suggestions but I kind of solved it. I produced a particle system using the word as the emitter then used Turbulent Displace with an alpha matte over a smoke stream I made in Motion.

    There is an anti-smoking TVC that runs here in New Zealand and the smoke streams off the cigarette and writes words in the air while still remaining ‘stringy’.

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