Adding steam and smoke to videos, what programs do you use?

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

On the video portion of this site, Milan Matejka added steam and smoke effects to his video of SP cabforwards in action (Jan 11, 2012). He did a masterful job using Particle Illusion3 by wondertouch.

I use Pinnacle Studio 15 for producing videos of our club model railroad. Does anyone know of an in-expensive program which can be used with Pinnacle Studio to add steam and smoke effects to video?

Thanks for your help!

2

If you have the library of suitable images, and you have Photo Shop, or can afford it, I would say it is king. My best modified early images in the hobby were done for me by Jarrell (jacon12) and RRCanuck whose name I should probably not divulge since he has never revealed it here himself.

Anyone who sticks with something long will eventually become reasonably adept, if not a master. Once I learned the rudiments of good model imaging, again from Jarrell, I felt that I ought to spare him from helping to improve my works, kind and obliging though he always was/is, and try to be self-sufficient.

So, along came a link to a programme called SageLight, from whom I forget…sorry. But even better, the purveyor was offering it at a name-your-price sale, and I gave him half the list price. I learned that it had a cloning brush that allowed me to swipe an area of the image needing improvements or alterations and use the image details and colours in that swiped reference area to paint, literally, the same thing in another part of that image. So, that is how I make steam and smoke effects…swiping part of the same image and placing it in ‘thin’ form, wisped and blotched, over the stack. For steam, any cloud will do, even the bright light from the headlamp on the smoke box.

With Adobe Photo Shop, though, you can go between images, taking from one and placing it superimposed on another. To date, Sagelight doesn’t have that capability.

BTW, my usual image viewing platform is FastStone, a freeware. It now has a cloning brush function. Check it out.

Crandell

3

Crandell,

Thanks for your reply. You mention “suitable images”. Are you referring to single photo images or does this work with videos as I am producing?

Thanks!

4

Oooppsss! I now realize you meant exclusively with video. My bad for not reading more carefully. I don’t believe my reply will help you much after all because it only pertains to still photography.

I regret my mistake. [D)]

Crandell

5

Shameless bump! Maybe the weekend crowd has some thoughts on this question??

Thanks!