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Firework Effect – Image displayed in firework sparks?
Oh humble Creative Cow denizens, I submit an effect problem that’s been plaguing me for the better part of a month.
I want to create a composition that features a fireworks explosion – the catch is, I want an image (a line drawing, to be precise) to appear *in* the fireworks. I’ve managed to somewhat pull it off using a Replicator with the Shape paramater set to ‘Image’, Arrangement set to ‘Random Fill’, a bajillion points, and my line drawing as the source image (using one of the firework particle generators as the cell), but it doesn’t look right and I’m looking for alternatives.
What one friend suggested is that I create a general ‘field’ of sparks, and then create a mask of sort to make the sparks ‘in’ the image glow brighter, but I haven’t been able to implement it successfully.
So, suggestions? How would you make such an effect look credible? I eagerly await your ideas!
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3 Replies
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So yo want the sparks to define the shape of the line drawing or you want the line drawing to be the cell image for the fireworks’ sparkles?
Jim Kanter,
Digital Film Institute
http://www.dfilminst.com -
The former – I’ve actually made a bit of progress but I’m still looking for more perspectives.
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Okay, so I’ve done a lot more fiddling – what I did was create a single particle emitter that shoots out one particle and lets gravity do its thing, now the problem is in getting the particles to ‘flare’.
Ideally, the sequence will look like this:
1. Regular firework occurs, fades out (probably colored gray or something so it’s not overpowering)
2. ‘Image’ firework flares into existence – shines really brightly, kinda looks like it’s hanging in the air
3. Particles in ‘Image’ firework start to succumb to gravity, fall, fade out.I have a rough render at https://www.thirdlensopen.com/private/firework_fullsequencetest.mov
The problem is that the keyframes for ‘scale over life’ seem to be screwing things up. The flare-in happens but the flare-out happens WAY TOO FAST, and I can’t figure out how to fix it.
The project is at https://www.thirdlensopen.com/private/firework_fullsequencetest.zip
A better version of the ‘image’ firework is at https://www.thirdlensopen.com/private/firework_imageburst.zip – it’s ‘better’ because i edited the image into a .psd so that fewer of the replicator points are on black space, wasting processor time. The export of that project can be viewed at https://www.thirdlensopen.com/private/firework_imageburst.mov
I know how ridiculously close I am, I just can’t figure out what needs to be corrected in order for this to look perfect. Ideally I’d like to save this as a custom replicator so that when I need to repeat it (the sequence I have in mind calls for me doing so, with several different images serving as templates for the firework burst), I can just drag and drop.
Help!
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