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forest on fire
Hi guys , any ideas how to make a burning forest .I have video footage from the forest , but i d like to composite fire , burning trees , smoke , fog , or if you know any tutorials .Thanks
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5 Replies
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Stock footage of fire would probably be the best way to go. If you’re serious about compositing fire in a realistic manner then I’d read up on working with 32-bpc and linear color spaces. Once you have the project properly setup all it requires is putting a layer of fire in and changing its blend mode to Add.
Otherwise you can work in 8 or 16-bpc and cheat it with a combination of blend modes. Add mode in gamma encoded color usually results in making the bright parts of the layer brighter than they ‘should’ be, but you might like that look.
As for smoke you can make some layers of animated fractal noise with a heavily feathered mask, but that probably won’t be enough to be really convincing. If you want billowing smoke try shooting some torn up cotton balls on black and applying a Liquify effect to them for some animation. You can also use something like Trapcode’s Particular to get some decent smoke effects.
Mark Christansen goes through the basics of doing this sort of thing (including the techniques I just described) in After Effects Studio Techniques:
There’s also a pre-order for the CS3 version:
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
If you have stock footage of various fires, you should be able to track them into the shots, wherever you want. I suggest using “additive” layer effects to mix the translucent fire plate with your forest plate. If you want, you could also try playing with displacement mapping to create the distorted heat-in-the-air effect.
I suggest renting a forest fire tape from your local library to use as a reference for what your shot should look like. If you get creative and have time to think about all the aspects of what happens in a forest fire, then track plates in to represent those things. Fire is a tricky beast. Not only is there flame, heat, charcoaling, debris, and destruction, there’s also the fluid effects of the changes in air density due to the heat. All these things are noticed subconsciously by the audience and mis-representing them for too long will be detrimental to the effect. Good luck. -
[Darby Edelen (wuzelwazel)] “working with 32-bpc and linear color spaces. Once you have the project properly setup”
Thanx for tips , but which are the settings for that kind of project , from dvpal footage . Should i use also linear blending ?
I bought the book of Christiansen but i cant figure out how he composite fire at figures 14.19a&b , any clue? -
Thanx man , can you be more specific about “additive” layer effects for that kind of project ?
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[fresconero] “I bought the book of Christiansen but i cant figure out how he composite fire at figures 14.19a&b , any clue?”
Read the chapter on 32bpc Linear Compositing, then sit and let that sink in, then read it again, then read the chapter on Pyrotechnics, let that sink in and you’re almost ready. Then look at the chapter on motion tracking, specifically the section on 3D tracking (there’s a demo version of SynthEyes on the disc that comes with the book). Now as long as you feel comfortable with all of that, you know pretty much everything that Mark needed to know to composite those forest fires.
If you’re not comfortable doing it in 32bpc linear then you can get away with using multiple layers of fire with different additive blending modes (Add, Screen, etc) and a plug-in like UnMult (https://www.redgiantsoftware.com/unmult.html), assuming that your fire has a black matte behind it.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA
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