Big Fire

When making really big fires sometimes achieving a high level of detail is hard and requires massive amounts of particles. In this project a rather large particle created using Fractal Noise is used because it provides high detail in itself - so the number of particles does not need to be very high.

Particles are emitted from the bottom of the scene upwards. The "flame" pre-comp is used as particle and colorized to orange. The orange flames are then added together forming the fire-like color gradient. Note that the orange color is "polluted" - not a clear orange - this makes all color channels add up to eventually form white. A clear orange color would never add up to white.

The "flame" pre-comp is a 3 second loop created using Fractal Noise. It has a circular-ish shape. When using it as a custom particle, the Particle>Custom>Time Sampling is set to "Random-Loop". This means playback will start from a random frame, then when the end (3 sec) is hit, it starts playing from the first frame. Since the "flame" comp is a seamless loop this jump-back will not cause any flickering, just a smooth ever-looping flame-like animation.