Fire?

[Zee]

Hey guys, it's been a while.

So I've been wondering: how do you animate fire?

Like when you turn on a lighter, set something on fire, and etc.

Sorry if this has been answered. I can't seem to find a good tutorial out there. =/

Greatly appreciated, guys.

[rtil]

fire is one of the hardest effects to animate

fire is an always moving, morphing shape, made of nice curves and points

when a flame leaves the main body and tapers, its shape literally flips from frame to frame

it's really hard to explain.. i don't have any examples on hand, but i could get some

the best way to think of it is each unique fire shape rises from the beginning of the flame and engulfs the old one. the hardest part is getting it to loop and look right

[Ying]

if something is being ignited, a 'wave' of fire goes upwards and curves into itself before quickly disappearing while the main body of the fire is underneath it (this is EXTREMELY BRIEF). from there, i'd keep it give the body a slight up and down bounce loop so it looks like it is tapering, but of course this is easier said than done.

[Zee]

Examples would be nice.

Thanks for the tips so far!

[ZekeySpaceyLizard]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQwOc0uzTTw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nRI5yhoiXI

[unclephil]

 

of course zekey's thing is better but  

[rtil]

yeah that's

not fire

at all

[unclephil]

i once did an actually good fire one time for the irc time trials but yeah dont even

[Zee]

I can't stop looking at the first video. Man.

It's tough to not make it look all choppy. Been trying to study them a bit this week.

And that looks like a monster spitting, shmeckelbot. Haha. Thanks for trying to help though! 8D

[rtil]

here's something i made a few weeks ago. it is not the best example, it could use another key. but it has some keyframes for a basic fire shape and sort of explains what i'm talking about. you can see shapes of fire rise and dissipate as they reach the top, and new ones come from the source of the flame. it's a constant battle between two shapes, and it results in a kind of "wave" , you can see it if you look from the side - especially in the animated fire youtube video zekey posted

[attachment=2894:fire_large.gif]

[Zee]

Oooh yeah, I noticed that!

I think I might try give it a go later.