Creating 3D fire in After Effects

If your budget doesn’t stretch to pricey plug-in filters you can use the native effects to create fantastic 3D fire in After Effects. Read my article in Digital Arts about how to achieve this. The tutorial features a step-by-step guide that’s easy to follow.

After Effects includes built-in particle filters you can use in your projects. Although they are not as powerful as some of the specialist 3D particle filters (like Trapcode’s amazing Particular plug-in), you can use them to achieve fairly convincing animations of natural phenomena such as fire, smoke, rain and dust.

All you need is patience and a natural affinity for tweaking sliders. In this tutorial, Angie Taylor shows you how to create fire, smoke effects and 3D rocks, all using After Effects’ built-in 3D particle filters, to create part of the title sequence for animation, Hellwoman, a spoof of the movie Hellboy.

Visit the Digital Arts website to get free access to this tutorial.