Giving the realistic fire effect to your project is not as tough as it seems. Whether you are doing practice or working on a real-time project, creating realistic fire VFX doesn't just imply expensive simulations.
If you know the right approach, using the right VFX stock asset you can easily make realistic fireworks footage. You will learn how to create realistic fireworks in this article using only ActionVFX stock elements.
Step-by-Step Guideline To Composite Realistic Fire
Using VFX stock footage, you can create realistic fire for your project. You can follow the steps defined here carefully for the same:
1). Choose the real Fire Footage
Assuming you need to composite realistic fire soon. Then you must skip the simulations and choose the real fire footage instead. They were captured with real cameras with a black background that gives it a realistic view.
2). Create the illusion
Now that you have perfectly picked up the realistic fire footage, add the movements in it according to the environment. If there is a camera movement in your scene then a still fire image couldn't look realistic. Using the software: After Effects, Nuke, Blender, and Resolve provides built-in 3D tracking tools for such situations.
3). Rotoscoping in fire composites
The flames of the fire need to blend with the scene. Rotoscoping will help you in fire composite and give you a more realistic fire scene. For a fast-moving flames scene, roto needs to be kept loose for a better view.
4). Subject reacts to the fire composite
The fire composite starts working as expected but what if your subject doesn't react to it? It also needs to react as per the flames’ movements, for eg., a particular subject needs to light when it comes in contact with the fire. You can use DaVinci Resolve Studio for this purpose.
- Isolate the subject by generating the Depth map.
- Then the scene will get exported as two delight maps- from left and right.
- It is now prepared to simulate firelight wrapping around the subject.
- Now add the blend mode for delight maps in After Effects.
- To match the flame source, tint each layer with a warm fire hue.
- At last, apply thewiggle expression to the opacity to simulate the flickers of real fire.
After that, you will see that the warmth will perfectly blend with the subject and it will look more realistic.
5). Add the Glow pass
Till now, fire flames have perfectly blended with the subject and in the scene. But a softness still can be noted. Glow pass can be used for this purpose as it will create an illusion that the actor is really trying to push out the light and heat of the fire flames. This step can only be done after the previous one as it draws the attention of the audience.
6). Generate the real behaviour of fire
How does the real fire actually act? Obviously by following the distortion, sparks and smoke. Distortion includes generating an effect of rising heat. Sparks delves into the movements in the scene and the atmosphere. Whereas for Smoke, it tends to add volume and make edges soft. Don't forget to add distortion as per the fire heat shot that you want to add to the scene.
7). Build your composite first
If you keep your focus on each fire clip separately to match your scene it may result in a mess and you might have to compromise the consistency as well. The best solution for this is you can build your own composite and then you can apply unified colours to bring uniformity.
This action will help you in creating the scene as one shot instead of giving an illusion of a different layering structure.
The assets used to composite realistic fire using VFX stock footage are: Nuke, After Effects, Blender, DaVinci Resolve, etc. They are all as easy as drag-and-drop systems and you can easily get more realistic fire footage.
Conclusion
Simulation can also be used to composite realistic fire footage but it can be more time-consuming and may end up with unrealistic results. If you follow all the steps defined in this article, you can easily see the changes in each step and can create a fire scene that perfectly blends with the movements and environment.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Q1. How to create realistic fire light flicker?
A- Create a duplicate fire layer and blur it. Mask it with the nearby surface and reduce the opacity.
Q2. How to add heat distortion?
A- You can use the displacement map for a blurred version of the fire. Don't forget to keep the distortion subtle so that real waves are visible but not extreme.
Q3. Why does my fire composite look fake?
A- There can be many reasons like- Fire brightness isn't properly blended in the scene, or poor layering, etc.