In this lesson, I learned two different ways to bring some more life into an environment, using After Effects: how to create smoke, and embers of a fire, both of which are 2D atmospherics that can really add some depth to a setting.

I started out with creating smoke, with a new composition in After Effects (5 seconds) and a solid layer named ‘smoke’. With that layer selected, I went into the ‘effects’ section at the top, down to ‘noise & grain’, and selected ‘fractal noise’. A smoky texture immediately appeared on my screen, but it was not animated.

 

 

I wanted it to be a bit closer to the screen, so I went to ‘transform’ in the settings of the effect and altered the scale, increasing it so that the texture was zoomed-in/larger. This made it quite blurry, however, so to fix that, I upped the complexity to make it a higher resolution. No, that the size was sorted, it was time to make the fog/smoke move. I did this by going to the evolution panel and moving the line in the circle. After getting a gist of how much it made the smoke move, I made sure the needle was at the beginning, and then clicked the stopwatch to add a keyframe. I then moved the needle to the end of the animation and dragged the line to a random number. Now if I played it back, the smoke would move on the spot, without any specific direction. I did want to give it a direction, however, so I used offset turbulence to do this and animated the smoke to move upwards the same way that I did for the evolution. It was also recommended to select ‘perspective offset’ to see if it would make it more 3d. This doesn’t work for all sequences, but I selected it for mine anyway, because any detail, even if subtle, is an improvement.

The next step was to alter the colour if we wanted to, by selecting the layer and going into effect. I went down to ‘colour correction’ and selected ‘curves’. A square grid appeared, with a line down the middle. This allowed me to change the brightness, colour values, and opacity, and, if I selected red, green, or blue, to change different aspects of the hue/colour. I did this for all three because I wanted the smoke to be a bit warmer, to give that smokey effect, so I dragged/moved the line slightly for each one until I got what I wanted. Now that the smoke looked and moved the way I wanted, the next thing to do was to cut it up, so that it did not cover up the whole screen. I clicked on the layer, and using the pen tool, drew out the section that I wanted to be visible. This left a very clear cut shape of the smoke that looked very flat and unrealistic. So, I went into the settings of the layer, into mask, and dragged the values of the feather option forwards until the edges were smoothed out.

 

 

I also experimented a bit with the contrast. I thought by increasing it, the smoke would look more menacing, but I didn’t like how choppy and broken up it was, so I did the opposite and decreased the contrast, which actually gave it that smokey fire effect I was looking for.

 

 

 

I was finally completely satisfied with the way the smoke looked and moved. The next atmospheric was creating embers (or snow with some little changes.)

Starting out the same way, I created a new composition and solid layer, named embers. With it selected, I went into ‘effect’ once more, this time going to ‘stimulation’ and clicking ‘cc particle world’. There were some solid changes to the layer after that! There was a grid on the bottom, and once I played it through, I saw that there was already a simple animation of sparks emulating from the centre. In the settings of the effect, the physics section contained most of the options that I was going to be changing and working with. I explored the different types of animation I could give the sparks, and I found some really cool options. I discovered that you could make a range of different firey things, form infernos to jet blasters. I clicked through a few of them before choosing the one we were meant to have.

 

 

I chose ‘twirl’ because the sparks twined around each other in a way that resembled fire. However, they were going downwards, when I wanted them to be flying up! So, I went to gravity and decreased the value into the negatives (going with -0.02). This changed the direction of the sparks, and their size slightly. I then changed the speed, by dragging the velocity value to 0.1. The final thing to do in order to position them correctly and give them the right attributes was to alter the X, Y and Z values – not of the position yet. (Y and Z at low, and X all the way up, for gravity). After that, I then changed the position and moved the embers to the bottom of the screen. It was that easy to create the illusion of a fire coming from the bottom – I was amazed!

 

 

The next thing I did, however, really gave the impression of fire. I created a new solid layer on top of the current one and chose a bright red colour. Using the ellipse tool, I then drew an oval shape towards the bottom, moved it where I wanted, at the embers, and using opacity and the feather tool, blended it out to resemble a glow. I repeated this with the second layer of a brighter colour, and put the smaller oval on top of the bigger one, again feathering out the edges. I loved the effect this created because it made the embers more lifelike.

 

 

I went back to the embers now, to see if I could them more realistic. I found a section where you could actually change the shape of the embers, which I didn’t need, but I played around with quite a bit. There were some really cool options, like twinkling stars and giant spheres, and I got a few ideas for how I could incorporate them into my fantasy animation.

 

 

But of course, I stuck with the original shape of the embers (line), and instead, went to effect again, to ‘blur and sharpen’, to see what kind of options there were to blur the sparks. I chose ‘Gaussian blur’ because I liked how the embers looked when I slightly blurred them with this effect. Realising that they were now a bit dull, however, I went back into effects, into ‘stylise’ and ‘glow’ which I added both to the embers themselves, and the shapes that I created to mimic the glow. I experimented with the settings (glow threshold, intensity, and radius) for both, to make sure that they were glowing an appropriate amount, and complementing each other. I think this really enhanced the overall look.

 

 

Something still didn’t look right though, and that was when I spotted that I hadn’t decreased the birthrate enough. The birthrate was how many sparks were born per second, and I didn’t make this quite low enough, so I changed the value to 0.1 so that much fewer sparks were created. I also took the opportunity to slightly tweak the longevity, which I also hadn’t made high enough, the die and birth colours, which were right (red and yellow), but not bright or unsaturated enough (I made the yellow slightly more saturated, and the red more of a wine/brown colour).

 

 

There were also a few settings which I didn’t really play around with at this point, even though they were an option. For example, I would have liked to try out turbulence displace, to mimic the shimmering heat that can be seen on top of a radiator. But I was conscious of time, and all that I had yet to do, so I went straight to combining the smoke and embers together.

This was honestly my favourite part because it was so simple, yet so effective. I dragged the smoke composition into the current one, placing it on top. Then, I scrolled through the wide selection fo blending modes, to see how I could make the smoke and fire look like one. I was quite torn between one or two, and I especially liked the ones where everything was slightly brightened, but the effect I was going for was more ominous, so I decided to use ‘soft light’ instead. I think it turned out so well, and the blending is done really well.

 

 

The final step was to add in some text and animate everything. I typed in the name I plan to give my fantasy show, although I’m still not 100% sure on it. Again, using blending modes, I incorporated the text into the other layers. My choice was ‘hard light’ this time because I like the way it slightly darkened the bottom and the way the embers interacted with the text. Now to really make it feel like a title animation, I animated the opacity of each layer so that everything fades at the optime moment. This really brought everything together. I would also like to note that I wasn’t a big fan of the font I used, but it was the best out of all the options, so I decided to use it (It was the one I used for the title sequence of RISE).

 

 

After some final changes, like the font colour, and some minor settings, I was done with the title sequence. I really enjoyed this process, especially learning new skills within after effects, that are so customisable and versatile. I acquired so many new ideas that I could use for my animation, and I’m excited to get to the point where I start storyboarding. As for the sequence itself, I made it a bit too short, but I think it’s just long enough to see all of my work come together well. My favourite part is the smoke because it is the most realistic part of everything. he embers and glow look awesome too, but if I had more time, I would really delve deeper into the settings, to try and make it less smooth and round, and also change the shape of the sparks a little. But, I think that overall, it was a success, and I’m really happy to know some techniques that I can bring into the environment and improve it further. I think this is a good concept for a potential title sequence, and I am planning on incorporating the embers, but I won’t be using this one, since it was quite experimental and I was still getting used to the settings. Here it is!