Volumetric Smoke with Trapcode Particular

Particular Volumetric Smoke from Peder Norrby on Vimeo.

This was an attempt at creating a volumetric looking smoke effect. It was totally improvised so it shows how I experiment to get the settings right.

After rendering the final clip I noticed I had to change the Particle>Size over Life curve so the particles size faded out rather than just disappearing abruptly. I also setup Aux>Opacity over Life so the auxiliary particles faded out (using opacity). Tutorial:

Particular Volumetric Smoke Tutorial from Peder Norrby on Vimeo.

Download AE CS5 AEP

Smoketrail

A spherical map of the sky (from Dosch Design) is mapped using Trapcode Horizon to the background in this comp. Trapcode Particular was used for the smoketrail.

Download AE 7.0 AEP - smoketrail.aep

This example is covered in the Horizon tutorial at around time 8:30

Trapcode Horizon and Particular. Some pretty advanced expressions to guide the smoketrail and the trailing camera. Note that since the camera is moving quite a lot, the spherical map has to depict something at infinite distance for it to look right. Two different cameras are used, one that follows the smoketrail in flight:

And another camera that stays on the ground simulating a hand-held view of the smoketrail. Note that this is the exact same animation - it is the same comp - but with second camera:

Crazy Rainbow Smoke

Trapcode Particular used to create a crazy smoketrail rainbow. Six Light Emitters are parented to a 3D null. The null is animated on a path in 3D space and the Light Emitters follow.

Download AE 6.0 AEP - crazy_rainbow.aep

Shine smokescreen

Advanced example: Trapcode Shine with smoke. Uses Fractal Noise to generate a smokescreen.

A 3D null-object "lightpos" is used to position the Source Point of Shine using an expression.

The logo and the smokescreen are 3D layers. The smokescreen layer is placed in front of the logo layer towards the camera. The camera is animated to move from left to right and auto-oriented towards the logo.

Shine is applied to an adjustment layer and smokescreen is used as a luma matte for that layer to create the look of rays in smoke. This adjustment layer is not shown in the illustration above because it is a 2D layer. 

The smokescreen layer is an animated Fractal Noise effect with keyframes set for Evolution and Offset Turbulence

Thanks to Scott Frizzle of Artifact for the inspiration!

View quicktime movie

Download AE 5.0 AEP - smoke.zip 

Flare with sparks and smoke

Flare using Trapcode Lux, sparks and smoke using Trapcode Particular. Resurrected from trapcode-people.

Download AE 6.0 AEP

Download AE CS5 AEP