Tutorials


	Some of the tutorials linked from this page (see navigation on left) are flash based, and were created with wink! Click next to advance a page, back to go back a page. On the last page, there is a larger back button or a go button that will re-start the tutorial. These tutorials require flash.

Flames using animated texture maps

Here is a way to make a flame using an animated texture map. The technique came from dvGarage way back when.

Basically, you make a “filmstrip” type movie of a grunge map (which is a dvGarage specialty). By putting a gradient over it, you generate something like this-

If you look at the flame_movie.car file, you can see how I generated this file. . . I used Carrara, because thats what I have. ;-) It was a loooong while ago, so it is almost certainly not the smartest way to do it- looking at the resultant file, I think it would probably be better if the white part at the bottom went all the way across. I think it is seamless too, but I don’t remember exactly how I got there.

Ok, so now you have a nice movie with some random type noise flowing through a light to dark gradient. Now what??

1) Make some sort of a flame shape, whatever is appropriate for your application.

2) Apply the flame movie to the alpha channel.

3) Adjust with the Curve filter if you need to (I did).

4) Apply the flame movie to the Glow channel, multiply it by a gradient or something else interesting.

5) I used a gradient in the Color channel too.

Here is the file- flame_sample.car. If you just use this file, you’ll need to grab the movie above to use as a texture map.

And here is the result. This technique can be used in many ways!

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