Smoke and Fire effect - Help!!!

I need to add a black smoke and then bursting flames effect to a project that I am working on. It is a pot on a kitchen stove that I need to have black smoke emitting from, then bursting into a small flame. What plug-ins can I do this with within FCP 4.5? I don't want to use any AE filters. Please help!!!

Thanks,

--John

As far as I know there's not anything within FCP to do that. What you want to do is pretty far outside the realm of 'editing'. The smoke is a particle job and the flames are different again. Perhaps if you don't want to work outside FCP you should think about outsourcing that part of the job.

If you can't afford to outsource or buy a program to do the job yourself, your next best bet is to film some smoke and flames (or buy them from a stock footage merchant) and composit them onto your footage. This is nowhere near as simple as it sounds. Getting actual footage of the pot smoking and catching on fire would be the simplest path.

One word: Motion
Your best bet in your situation.
Easy learning curve.
Inexpensive.
You may alredy have it.
Great smoke effects and particles.

Second word:

Shoot it.

It wasn't all that long ago that we would never dream of simulating such effects is software, we'd just get out the pyro apparatus and fake it. Much more fun, too.

bogiesan

<<...we'd just get out the pyro apparatus and fake it.>>>

Funny you waould call shooting real smoke and flame "faking it". Is using digital effects "for real"?

Scott

MOTION MOTION MOTION

Affordable and youll be happy with what it can give you.

MOTION.

1. bogiesan is right - best realistic solution is to shoot it... otherwise you will need a skilled compositor to make this look real with plug-ins & pyro FX.

2. Disagree with Motion... it DOES NOT do convincing photo-realistic fire, period. I call it "late night low-budget cable spot" fire (really cheesy & fake). Smoke FX can be nice if composited correctly.

For REAL fire & explosion FX you can composite into your piece (and I do recommend After Effects for the compositing), you might want to look into Pyromania Pro:

[www.vce.com]

Smoke, Fire, Sparks, Explosions, etc.

- Joey



When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.