Fireballs in After Effects?
by Lyndon Booth
on
Apr 28, 2005 at 2:51:08 pm
Hi! I'm a student and right now I'm trying to add a special effect to my film. I've followed several tutorials on this site and have a limited knowledge of After Effects, but this one stumps me.
What I'm after is two golden fireballs that I can put over a character's hands. I've tried making the effect, but nothing looks good. It would also be great if there was a "trail" behid the fireballs as the character runs. Can anyone offer any suggestions? I'll put you in the credits of my film!
Re: Fireballs in After Effects? by yikesmikes on Apr 28, 2005 at 5:13:45 pm
I too am particle-challenged, but I wouldn't write Particle Illusion off so quickly. Word in the dark alleys of the Cow (PI forum) is that PI will be a plugin for AE this summer. Anyway, if you're a cheap student, downoad the PI-SE (lite version, 2.0, not the newer 3.1) and you can have fireballs with trails in notime. The SE demo is fully functional and NOT watermarked for 30 days so you can actually produce something useful. Do 2 of the 4 tutorials and you can do what you want. Also good tutorials at their site for getting AE position keyframes if you need that info. Basically you'll make the effect then bring it into AE to put it on top of your footage.
Re: Fireballs in After Effects? by alts on Apr 28, 2005 at 5:54:02 pm
Trapcode is the only real solution. Not only do the particles look better in general but they also give you that third dimension. You cannot live without this 3D capability if you really want to generate professional, hip looking effects. You will fall in love with all of trapcodes products. And no, I don't work them, just a happy end user.
Re: Fireballs in After Effects? by yikesmikes on Apr 28, 2005 at 8:07:37 pm
I need to check out Particular before I buy, but if you're into wierd particle worm-like-tentacle things, oops I'm letting the dark-side out, PI has a place... maybe.
