Create a dynamic flame trail using particle systems in Adobe After Effects to simulate realistic fire effects. Learn how to apply and configure Particle System 2 to follow a moving rocket ship without altering the original graphic layers.
Key Insights
- Particle systems such as Particle Playground, Particle World, and Particle System 2 in After Effects can simulate effects like fire, smoke, and water, with Particle System 2 offering a balance of performance and features for this project.
- Instead of applying the particle effect directly to the animated object, a new solid layer is created and used exclusively for the particle system, preserving the original artwork from Illustrator.
- Noble Desktop's training demonstrates how to adjust key parameters such as birth rate and longevity to control the density and duration of particles, ensuring the flame trail appears at the correct time and follows the animation effectively.
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In this lesson, we'll be working with particle systems to create an effect like this. This is the preview movie flying rocket ship. It's in the preview movie folder for this lesson.
And as you can see, there's a rocket ship kind of bouncing around flying in the air, and there's this flame trail coming out of it. And that's what we're going to make, the flame trail. All the other graphics in here are just made in Adobe Illustrator.
They're just graphics, they're images, no problem at all. You can make them in a lot of different softwares. The flame trail, however, is made in After Effects using what's called a particle system, which is how you simulate flame, smoke, fire.
It's how you simulate water, that sort of thing. And there's a lot of ways of doing this. We're just going to use a relatively quick one.
So let me close that. And the start file for this is particle animation started in the particle system effects folder. So open that up.
I'll get that message. I will save my file. You can call the file whatever you want.
I always just call it my name for the practice classes. And then whatever it happens to be about, in this case, particles, generated particles. So I've already got this comp set up.
This is, again, all made in Illustrator. There's a rocket ship layer. There's a couple layers that are hidden here, stars and lines.
If you want to actually build a full animation with this, you got some stuff to do. It's pretty cool. All I really have is a background, a outer ring.
That's the outer ring right there. Inner ring and the rocket ship. Okay.
So now what I want to do is basically create the flame trail and I need to make it so it follows along the rocket ship. That is my goal. Now, some effects modify the content of layers.
So for example, if I were to put on this rocket ship, if I were to put on a page turn, that would simply let me twist or twirl the page. Error. It would simply let me twist or twirl the layer.
But some effects like particle systems, by the way, completely replace layer content. Instead of applying the particle system directly to the rocket ship layer, I'm going to actually make a new layer. Layer new.
And that was grayed out because my timeline was not active. Now layer new solid will work. Okay.
I'll make it the comp size. I'll say, okay. The color is irrelevant because the moment I apply the particle system, it's going to go away.
And right now you can see it's covering the rocket ship. And if I do a search and effects and presets for the word particle, P-A-R-T-I-C-L-E, I'm gonna get three choices with that name. Now, for the record, not every particle system in this program has the word particle in it.
There's a bunch of them that have other names, but these do. Particle Playground, Particle World, and Particle System 2. Now look, all three of these could do what I need. Particle World is the most powerful of these three, but it has a lot of features I don't really need for just a flame trail.
Particle Playground and Particle System 2 basically will do the same thing. Particle Playground, however, is older. And in general, Particle System 2 just has more features.
It's a little faster to run, that sort of thing. So I use that. I double click and my solid goes away.
But if I press space bar to preview this, I can see that it's been replaced with this firework effect. That's the particle system. Okay.
So go back to the beginning. I'm going to rename this flame trail. I'm going to drag it below the rocket ship layer, like so.
And now I simply want to move the layer over. I'm going to grab the middle of the layer, drag it to the left so it starts before timeline. So particle systems are designed to go from nothing to having particles appear and then vanish.
The rocket ship is blasting off, that'd be fine. But in this situation, we actually want it to already start on screen. So by just dragging the layer over, we can start it earlier.
I'll go to the end of the layer, just extend it to the timeline. And now what we have is a particle system that runs the entire time. Now it's not the right shape or look or appearance.
I mean, that's a different issue. But now it actually does start. The animation does start with the particles on screen.
Okay. And I can adjust the rest of this to get what I want. So first, birth rate and longevity.
Birth rate is how many particles are generated. So higher numbers will give you more particles. Longevity is how long they survive.