Tutorial: Smoke and Flames

Written by devvv (18 May 2007 08:27 AM)

In this tutorial, I'll show how to create fairly realistic smoke in the GIMP. After that I'll show you how to convert the smoke into cool looking flames in just some very easy steps. Enjoy!

1. Create a new file: 800x600px. (black background-color)
   - add a new layer, it shall be transparent
   - take a big, white brush and paint some big dots as seen on the picture below.
   
   click to enlarge
2. Now take the Eraser-Tool, and delete some parts of these dots, so that you get something like a half moon at the end.
   
   click to enlarge
3. Next apply a gaussian blur to this layer: Filter / Blur / Gaussian
   
   click to enlarge
4. This step is now very important: Go to Filter / Distorts / IWarp.
   
   Adjust the settings as seen on the picture.
   
   Deform Mode: Swirl CW. In the preview window hold your left mousebutton down and start to zigzag from left to the right pretty fast.
   
   The purpose of this is to get points that are streched a little bit. DON'T click the OK button yet.
   
   click to enlarge
5. Now swith to another Deform Mode: Move. This step will take some time until you're finished. Try to move the single points/dots together and alsy try to move them a little to the top. Look at my picture to see what it should look like.
   
   When finished click OK.
   
   click to enlarge
6. It looks like this now (of course you will have no the identical image but you should now have something like this):
   
   click to enlarge
7. Duplicate the layer. Select the Flip-Tool (SHIFT+F), click the layer once and you should have a flipped layer.
   
   click to enlarge
8. - Filter / Blur / Gaussian: 10px.
   - Move the layer a little more to the bottom.
   - In the layers dialog click the one layer that is at the top.
   - Click right and choose "Merge down".
   
   click to enlarge
9. - Filter / Blur / Gaussian: 10px.
   
   Okay. So that does not look like real smoke, doesn't it. It is to thick/strong. To get rid of the strongness go to Colors / Curves. Top left select "alpha". Then adjust the curve seen below.
   
   click to enlarge
10. Now it looks better!
    
    click to enlarge
11. We want to make our smoke look more realistic, so we have to remove some parts of the picture that don't look natural ;)
    
    For this take the Erase-Tool. In the settings chhoose a big soft brush. (If you don't habe a big soft brush you've to create one in the brushes-editor first!)
    
    In my picture I've removed some smoke in the top middle.
    
    click to enlarge
12. We're now done with the details of the smoke. To get a better overall feeling we're going to enhance it with a very slight backgound that shoud give us the feeling of have some sort of environment smoke.
    
    Take the free select tool (F) and draw a selection around our smoke (like an outline).
    
    click to enlarge
13. - add a new layer
    - Filter / Render / Clouds / Solid noise.
    
    Random: checked, others unchecked.
    X/Y: 4/4.
    Details: 1
    
    click to enlarge
14. Adjust the opacity of the layer to 20%.
    
    click to enlarge
15. Smoke dows also have a structure/pattern. We're goint to simulate this as follows:
    
    - add a new layer on the very top.
    - Fill it with a medium grey tone.
    - Filter / Noise / HSV and take these values
    
    click to enlarge
16. Filter / Enhance / Sharpen: 85px.
    
    Set the layers mode to Divide and the opacity / transparency to 40%.
    
    click to enlarge
17. Now we're just going to colorize our smoke a little bit.
    
    Create a new layer on top of all. Fill it with #afbeff and set the layers mode to "Color", the opacity to 10%.
    
    The smoke is done!
    
    click to enlarge
18. Here is a photo which I added our just created smoke to.
    
    click to enlarge
19. Now we're going to convert our smoke to some cool looking flames.
    
    Save your smoke to smoke.xcf.
    
    Click the eye icon of the blue layer to make it invisible.
    
    Duplicate the smoke-layer, flip it, move it to another place in the image and remove some parts of the duplicated layer so that we don't see that it is just a duplicate.
    
    click to enlarge
20. - Go to Edit / Copy visible.
    - Edit / Paste
    
    Click the anchor-button in the layers dialog to get the pasted to a seperate layer.
    
    After that choose the IWarp Filter again, select Move and in the preview window move the "flames" from left to the middle and from right to the middle. It looks like this now:
    
    click to enlarge
21. Colors / Brightness & Contrast: 60/50.
    
    Then apply Colors / Color Balance
    
    Shadows: 100 / -100 / -100
    Midtones: 100 / 100 / -100
    Highlights: 100 / 100 / -100
    
    Thats it ;)
    
    click to enlarge
22. I've you're playing around abit like me you can do some cool flames. I'm using this one as a desktop wallpaper atm ;)
    
    click to enlarge
23. Or you can just colorize it blue, looks cool too!
    
    click to enlarge

This work is licensed under the following license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Austria.

Discussion / comment this tutorial

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From: Bobby (15 Jun 2008 12:01 AM)

[URL=http://img382.imageshack.us/my.php?image=77944440lm1.jpg][IMG]http://img382.imageshack.us/img382/273/77944440lm1.th.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

the other screenshot didnt work

From: Bobby (15 Jun 2008 12:00 AM)

[URL=http://imageshack.us][IMG]http://img382.imageshack.us/img382/273/77944440lm1.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

From: Bobby (12 Jun 2008 07:31 PM)

little trouble at first, but this is a great way for making somoke or flames

From: Robert (13 Jan 2008 05:56 AM)

Wow this tutorial is just great!! thanks for sharing!

From: Pixkid (09 Dec 2007 07:53 PM) – Send a private message

This tut is insane!!!! I mentioned you and your tut at http://www.gimptalk.com/forum/topic/Hand-in-fire-tut-26869-1.html#top to make this:

From: I_Greedious (15 Jul 2007 12:05 AM)

wow!..i have only been using gimp for a week..and thanks to great tuts like this one i have really learned alot!
i followed this tut half way then experimented with my own effects and set it as wallpaper too!...lol
great stuff.

From: Tyler Gillies (04 Jul 2007 04:40 PM)

nice!

From: M.rSnow (14 Jun 2007 11:52 AM)

Really nice. Il use this tut some time.
TFS (thanks for sharing)

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