Adding smoke/steam to videos??

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

Hi,

Is there anyone on this board who works with Adobe After Effects software to add smoke/steam to their videos? I am a newbie with this and could use some help from model railroaders with some experience with this software.

Thanks!!

2

Not sure about After Effects, but the free 3D app called Blender is not only capable of doing smoke, but it recently added camera and object tracking features which allow you to combine 3DCG elements (in this case smoke) with live-action video.

Be warned, though. Blender’s learning curve is pretty steep. This isn’t something you’re going to learn in a weekend and be cranking out videos overnight. First you need to learn to use the Object Tracker. Then you need to learn about Particle Emitters to create the smoke. Then you need to learn Node Compositing to combine everything together. Fortunately there are Youtube tuorials for all of these. If you’re willing to put in some effort you should be able to get some stunning results.

Here’s a video I made to show you what’s possible. The sculpture, the wood base, and the placemat are all CG.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IURi6cmttJQ

Steve S

3

Steven, just what do you do for a living, etc, you have no bio but you do amazing things!!!

4

It’s just a hobby, but one I’ve been playing around with since the '90s, so I’ve been learning a bit at a time for quite a while. Which is why I said it’s not the type of thing you’re going to learn over a weekend. Youtube tutorials help speed up the process. When I first started out Youtube didn’t exist and there were few if any tutorials. It was mainly learning by trial and error.