There's no Smoke without Fire

As part of our tutorials, we were shown particle systems. Using these tools we were able to create smoke and fire which will come in handy when doing the final animation as fire and smoke are part and parcel in explosions.

This tutorial was also extremely useful for me as Particle Systems are the new technique that I wanted to develop. Because of this I made extensive notes based upon a couple of tutorial videos and the techniques that we were shown in class.

I created both the smoke and fire based upon tutorial notes and through watching some tutorial videos.

First I started by creating a Super Spray particle system by choosing the Particle Systems creator. Once this was selected it was much the same as other basic objects in placing in the scene, just drag and drop. When placing the system initially, you have control over its size. This can be altered later.

Once the Particle System has been placed, we must set it up in terms of how it will look. With the system in the view port we are presented with various modifying options in the modifier tab.

The number of particles used per frame was the first task, this is found within the Particle Generation Tab, Particle Quantity then Use rate. Similarly for Particle Size and Timing. The Timing controls when the particles are emitted from and to.

We can also change the type of particles emitted. Initially I chose Facing. The Facing particles will always face the viewer, no matter what angles they are seen from. Later I changed this the spherical ones as I felt these gave a more realistic smoke effect.

Now that the basic particle system was established, I could then start to add materials to it so that it was actually smoke coloured. This process was similar to adding materials to any other model, by using the Material Editor.

By going into the Maps tab followed by the Diffuse colour option and then choosing particle age, we can edit the colour of the the particles as they age. They will be one colour when emitted, another half way through the animation and then a final colour before they disappear.

Similarly with the Opacity. We are presented with two channels, Map and Mask. Within the Map channel I placed the Noise Map to give a dappled effect and Gradient in the Mask channel to make the colour transitions smooth.

After a few goes and messing around with colours I was left with smoke and fire.