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Particle Playground on Fire

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Particle PlaygroundJoin me and George in this interesting experiment. Learn how to generate particles from motion. No keyframes, no expressions. This one is hot!

People! I’m on fire! George is on fire! And this tutorial is on fire! This tutorial is rather an experiment. I’ll show you how to generate particles from live action footage without using any keyframes or expressions.

The final fire look is just one of the possibilities. The idea of this is to show you how to generate particles that inherit motion and velocity from live footage. In the end you may use this tutorial to create a smoke trail of a falling plane, shining sparkles following someones moves, and basically anything you want. And most interesting of all… this is achieved using After Effects build in tools. No plugins required. Enjoy!

Particle Playground is very powerfull but it’s also very hard to master. It’s just not as user-friendly as 3rd-party plugins, like Trapcode’s Particular. If you’d like to know more about Particle Playground make sure to visit CreativeCow.net and Roland R. Kahlenberg’s tutorial.

Make sure to see the follow up tutorial: Particle Playground on Ice

Download: ParticlePlaygroundOnFire.zip (After Effects CS3 Professional)

47 Responses to “Particle Playground on Fire”

  1. Nothing can be said about this tutorial that hasn’t already been said about Adobe After Effects itself :)

    Pierce said this November 2nd, 2007 at 20:22

  2. This is a real treat! Cheers

    Scott Bishop said this November 2nd, 2007 at 21:12

  3. You got wonderful fingers!!! :D

    DaMasteRZ said this November 2nd, 2007 at 22:54

  4. I really like it, thanks mate! :D

    Onno said this November 3rd, 2007 at 0:49

  5. Nice Buddy very very impact full Buddy!!! ;)

    Umair said this November 3rd, 2007 at 5:47

  6. Thanks !! I like it ^^

    Maciej said this November 3rd, 2007 at 15:26

  7. Hey Jerzy,

    Very clever. Nice to see you back too!
    You’ve got what the Germans call “Fingerspitzengefühl”. And to be honest, I hope you will still have it after the fire is extuinguished.

    Cheers

    Robbert-Jan van der Does said this November 3rd, 2007 at 23:34

  8. Hey maltaannon, great job. I liked how you used time difference effect. I have never seen it done that way before. It beats the hell out of tracking. Where could I learn more about that effect?
    Keep them coming.
    Take care!

    Orangesoda said this November 4th, 2007 at 0:20

  9. Oh if you want to know more about Time Difference effect just use my “Suggest a tutorial” form and send me some ideas. Besides… Time Difference is very easy on it’s own. Just try to play with it for a while. Cheers

    Maltaannon said this November 4th, 2007 at 14:30

  10. There are plenty of fields when this one can be used. Starting from teleportation for example and finishing with a dragonball efect :-)

    Kopiart said this November 5th, 2007 at 8:44

  11. Very smart. thnx

    Way2Evil said this November 5th, 2007 at 11:20

  12. Thanks for the great tutorial! Will you cover how to make it look more realistic by making the fire light reflect on the character, objects and room?

    SPOTS said this November 5th, 2007 at 12:02

  13. Great job guy! I wanted to reproduce that effect next to the video game “Bioshock”

    Thx :)

    Homer said this November 5th, 2007 at 15:24

  14. Great tutorial. Could you duplicate that ramp and turbulence comp and use it to create lighting for the video layer, so that the light emitted from the flames can be seen on the subject, the surrounding walls, etc?

    cbowyer said this November 5th, 2007 at 16:18

  15. Sure. Just try it out. If it doesn’t work than try something else. Maybe an adjustment layer and a glow effect that will spread around the fire, or whatever. Just play around it for a while and I’m sure you’ll figure out some cool ways to use it.

    Maltaannon said this November 5th, 2007 at 21:42

  16. Uuuuhh! Excellent blend of effects! The result is awesome!.. Cheers from Portugal!

    Harvest said this November 6th, 2007 at 3:04

  17. Clever work.

    JD said this November 7th, 2007 at 7:02

  18. Nice i like it and i hope that you will make more tutorials =]

    Stefan said this November 7th, 2007 at 8:41

  19. Hi, This is Excellent Tutorial Thankx

    rashid said this November 7th, 2007 at 12:37

  20. Hi,
    First of all; great job on this one, you made a awsome effect look like “easy”…
    I don’t have CS3 yet, so I would like to know if there a similar effect like the “playground particule” in CS2 ??? (I do have trapcode’s particular…is it something i can use?)
    Thank you and keep on the good work !

    Ghislain, Québec, Canada said this November 7th, 2007 at 15:02

  21. Hi,

    great tutorial with nice fire but I´ve got a problem:

    As soon as I select a layer in the layer exploder (I use a comp as source with 1 wiggleing layer in it that has a feathered mask on it) my afterFX starts rendering millions and millions of particles. Yea, I set the particles/sec to “0″. It does the same without feathering or also without wiggle.

    Any Idea?
    PP

    Patrick said this November 7th, 2007 at 20:30

  22. is the wiggleing comp a precomp? it should be. and besides that always try to set the layer exploder when you’re at the beginning of your timeline. it’s easier for AE to calculate the particles. if that doesnt help than you might contact me directly using skype.

    Maltaannon said this November 8th, 2007 at 10:03

  23. Ghislain you’re bound to have it in CS2. Back in the day I used to mess with Particle Playground with 6.0 :D

    cheers for the tutorial!

    Michael Hardie said this November 8th, 2007 at 15:05

  24. Had no idea you could do stuff like this in AE, been taking out ropes and things for sfx but nothing like this. Cheers bro, primo.. Couldn’t find how to put the expression on properly but still looks pretty cool, I’ll have to check out your earlier tuts to suss that I think.

    Cheers again bro… you’ve got me thinking.

    Jack said this November 9th, 2007 at 13:43

  25. Thanks a lot! This effects is so amazing and there are lots of possibilities!

    17th Letter Films said this November 9th, 2007 at 22:44

  26. Hi again,
    starting at the beginning helped a lot!
    an the wigglelayer has been a precomp, but I shot some footage today and will continue with that for now.

    thank you very much so far
    PP

    Patrick said this November 9th, 2007 at 23:44

  27. Thanks for putting this tutorial up; I got a looooot out of it!

    Kevin Nabity said this November 13th, 2007 at 17:07

  28. You are one crazy mind! Amazing doesn’t touch you. If I learned a fraction of what you know, I would be happy. Thank you for your GREAT tutorials.

    Maik

    Maik Fleischmann said this November 16th, 2007 at 15:10

  29. Hey great tutorial. Got me a little lost at some points but I caught on quick. Thanks alot. I look forward to more.

    Brett said this November 18th, 2007 at 2:47

  30. awsum tut man….keep uploading…..im lovin it…

    arpit said this November 25th, 2007 at 16:44

  31. Got to be careful at gas stations…

    Great Tut, thanks a lot.
    Keep up the good work.

    Leo said this November 25th, 2007 at 18:32

  32. I love AE and don’t get enough time with it - have CS3 now but am trying to use tutorials to save time learning - this was really a lesson on several different things - I just loved it!! Just been working on a project for a state fire marshal so it’s perfect. I will be checking out all your other tutorials - thanks for all your efforts.

    Thea said this November 29th, 2007 at 8:08

  33. Great job on the tutorial! You make everything so simple. Keep up the good work!

    Crackfest said this December 1st, 2007 at 0:09

  34. WOW, you created another Monster with that, this Technique gave me 10 new Ideas.

    Maltannon you are getting better and better…AE seems so easy to use while you work with it.

    People, donate for this side to keep it alive!!!
    (George needs food :))

    IllD said this December 3rd, 2007 at 2:59

  35. Have got to really thank you for this! Is really helpful :D
    and you are Great man ^O^

    yenuiyins said this December 18th, 2007 at 10:49

  36. very simple and useful! big thanx!

    antory said this December 24th, 2007 at 13:47

  37. i dont understand how did we get the “particles playground ”
    i dont have it in my effect

    ilan said this December 26th, 2007 at 22:37

  38. Thank you for sharing your knowledge. One question: You mentioned that George doesn’t move, just his hands. Would it still work if, say, George was walking or jumping?

    cred said this February 9th, 2008 at 23:25

  39. Yes, but then it would burn his whole body. It “burns” everything that has changed in the video clip across last few frames.

    Maltaannon said this February 10th, 2008 at 3:39

  40. Wow this tutorial is hot indeed ! Great Job
    I gonna play with this :D…
    Very very usefull, you can use it for almost everything!
    Keep up the good work ;)

    Bob said this February 29th, 2008 at 11:20

  41. Thanks For A Wonderful Tutorial.You Are Great For After Effects.
    Thanks Mr.Maltaannon.

    Faisal Amin said this March 7th, 2008 at 8:19

  42. I can’t find “Particle playground” in my after effect, I use v.7.
    Where can I find it?.

    Beside it, a very useful tutorial, I was looking how to set my hands on fire, thanks.
    By the way, how do I do it with my whole body?, like Human Torch, or something like that?.

    Ilya said this April 6th, 2008 at 15:02

  43. Well… I hate to be the one pointing this out to you, but are you using legal version of After Effects Pro?

    Maltaannon said this April 6th, 2008 at 23:10

  44. Nop, too expensive, about $1000, I can’t afford it, sorry.

    Ilya said this April 7th, 2008 at 13:05

  45. That’s probably why it’s missing.

    Maltaannon said this April 8th, 2008 at 1:01

  46. Awesome tutorial!!! I had a question regarding the particles comp. When I select my source file for the “Layer Exploder” the source layer gets offset to the right. Have you seen this before? If I turn off the effect, my original source looks good. Once I turn on the effect the particles appear, expand slightly and shift to the right. All the comps are the same size and I ran the tutorial several times. When I look at the final comp, the particles comp looks like they are different sizes. I checked the settings and everything is the same. I am using AE 6.5 Pro. Thanks for your time and this great tutorial.

    Henry Lankila said this April 20th, 2008 at 7:04

  47. Strange. My first thought was that the comp size differs accros the project, but since you’ve checked that it’s hard to say, or I’m simply missing something. Contact me through the Contact section on this site, and make sure to provide your real email. I’ll write you back, so you could send me the project file. I’ll take a look in my spare time (yeah… like I ever have time for myself)

    Maltaannon said this April 20th, 2008 at 11:43

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