Noobie post: How to add smoke?

[Michael Szalapski]

It\’s definitely possible to add smoke in AE, but how good it looks often depends on your experience. Doing it practically on set would, as you surmised, be a lot easier than the digital options.
You could film smoke against a black background and lay that over your existing footage with the blend mode set to screen.
You could use fractal noise or a similar effect to add the haze.

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

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[Chris Wright]

just type smoke in the search box and you’ll get a lot of useful advice. And next time, use a really cold bottle of Rum at 10 degrees F. It won’t freeze and will give off nice vapour. After shoot, open bottle, serve.

https://technicolorsoftware.hostzi.com/

[Todd Kopriva]

There are some tips in the articles linked to from the “Fog, smoke, and clouds” section of AFter Effects Help.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share—or if there is something that you’d like to see added or improved—please leave a comment.

[Todd Kopriva]

> just type smoke in the search box

Let me do that for you:
After Effects Community Help search for ‘smoke’

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
———————————————————————————————————
If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share—or if there is something that you’d like to see added or improved—please leave a comment.

[Austin Steele]

Thanks guys. I shoulda looked a little harder. I did but I guess my question which was the best way to do it to film the smoke or to create it digitally.

Thanks.

[Todd Kopriva]

> I did but I guess my question which was the best way to do it to film the smoke or to create it digitally.

In general, I think that the easiest way to is get a clip of real smoke (either by filming it yourself or getting a clip from a stock footage source) and composite that onto your footage using the techniques in the pages that I linked to. Sometimes you may want to use a Distort effect on the smoke layer to make it fit your needs.

Sometimes the answer is to simulate the smoke digitally with a particle effect. But I recommend doing that only when you’ve determined that the other methods (which are easier to make look realistic) won’t work for you. Too many people leap straight into trying to simulate smoke digitally and then are frustrated that it takes work to make it look realistic.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
———————————————————————————————————
If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share—or if there is something that you’d like to see added or improved—please leave a comment.

[Austin Steele]

Awesome. Would it be better to film against black or a greenscreen? I have access to a nice greenscreen.