Volumetric fractal smoke - 2 approaches

Two little experiments to create pseudo-volumetric smoke objects in After Effects, one using Particular, the other using the built-in fractal noise plugin in AE and an awful lot of layers.

Both have their own unique look. The Fractal noise version took hours to render compared to the Particular version (which took about 30 mins). The project files are free to download and reuse under a Creative Commons license from the Digital Distortion website.

Particular version:

Fractal noise version:

There are issues with visual artifacts when you get closer in to the fractal noise version (you can see the individual layers, creating an ugly "scanline" effect), so hopefully someone else out there can improve the technique and share it!

Update: Based on feedback, I've done a new version of the Particular one, using a custom smoke comp generated using fractal noise. This gives kind of a hybrid look of the two approaches.

The project file is downloadable here.

Comments

[Peder Norrby]

Cool!

[Mr.G]

So nice with Particular

[illd]

Thanks for sharing. Interesting comparison. No offense but I wonder why the Particular Version looks so bad, there is much more potential! Look at this examples by ANdrew Kramer http://www.videocopilot.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/shadows_only_big.jpg

[Dan Sollis]

Hmmm... well you're right - I'm sure the Particular version could have been done better (using custom textures for the smoke particles for example), but to call it "bad" is a bit harsh. "Mediocre" is surely more appropriate ;) I've seen Andy Kramer's stuff before and he's certainly one of the best out there, but that particular example (excuse the pun) isn't animated IIRC.

I did that version pretty quickly and it's relatively simple - which might be of benefit to people who haven't created smoke effects using Particular before. It's more to compare with the other technique (using fractal noise), which is - to my eyes - a fairly unique effect that I haven't seen done in AE before.

Oh - and if you like animated smoke, then Peder's earlier demo here: http://www.trapcode.com/sharelog/2010/10/27/volumetric-smoke-with-trapcode-particular.html is really impressive.

[Peder Norrby]

Indeed, AK's is much better looking but if orbiting the camera it would look funny with the camera-facing sprites and they might "pop" in front of each other. The advantage of Dan's approach (and mine) is that they allow for near unlimited camera-moves. So which technique to use depends on the shot's requirements.

Peder Norrby / Trapcode

[Dan Sollis]

I'm rendering out an alternate version of this project using some custom fractal-noise-generated particles which is more of a hybrid look of the two. As Peder pointed out though, there are issues with particles "popping" when you use custom textured sprites. I'll upload it to vimeo and put up the project file as before.