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Create the illusion of fire and smoke: CC Particle Systems II and After Effects 7.0

by Bob Donlon

People ask me a lot of questions about particles in Adobe® After Effects® 7.0. Particle generators can be a little hard to wrap your head around at first, so I recommend the CC Particle Systems II effect as a good jumping-off point. The “CC” stands for Cycore, which are the 60 additional Cycore Effects that come included with After Effects 7.0 on a separate installer on the After Effects or Production Studio installer disks. For example, on the Production Studio Disk 1, browse to \English\Third Party Software\Cycore Effects.

The basic concept with a particle generator is that a particle is born, it does something over time, and then it dies. CC Particle Systems II is one of the first particle generators ever developed for After Effects, and while it’s not as feature-rich as the Particle Playground effect (Effect > Simulation > Particle Playground), or other third-party particle generators, CC Particle Systems is an easy effect to learn. Also, you can apply your knowledge of this particle generator to more complex incarnations.

Select Layer > New > Solid to add a new solid layer to your After Effects composition (comp) and make it the new layer the size of your comp. With the solid layer selected, select Effect > Simulation > CC Particle Systems II. Select Composition > Preview > RAM Preview to preview your work with RAM preview, and then you’ll see a basic fireworks effect similar to the one shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: The default fireworks effect produced with CC Particle Systems II.

The Particle Systems II effect controls and the default results in the Comp viewer. When you first open the panel (Effect > Simulation > CC Particle Systems II), all of the controls in the Effect Controls panel are twirled up (hidden). Click the triangles next to Producer, Physics, and Particle to reveal their respective controls. Most of the controls in the panel are self-explanatory (such as Velocity, Gravity, and so on). The first place to start with your effect is to decide what kind of particle you want to generate. Select the Particle Type pop-up menu and try each of the selections in this menu to see what they look like.

A common application of a particle generator is to create fire and smoke. So to create this kind of effect, select Shaded&Faded Sphere from the Particle Type pop-up menu. Then change the Birth Color and Death Color settings to colors that resemble fire (see Figure 2). When the particles are born, you want them to be an orangey red. When they die, you want the particles to be close to black in color.

Next, use Figure 2 to make the rest of your settings, one by one, starting from the top of the panel. Each time you change a setting, preview your work with RAM preview (Composition > Preview > RAM Preview) to see the results of your changes. This gives you a basic idea of the influence of each control.

Figure 2: The CC Particle Systems II settings in the Effect Controls panel.

After you change your settings to match those in Figure 2, you should have an effect that resembles fire and smoke. To give the effect some extra punch, open the Levels panel (Effects > Color Correction > Levels) and adjust the sliders on the histogram as shown in Figure 3. Again, pay close attention to the visible results in the comp while you make the adjustments.

Figure 3: Adjust levels to alter your effect.

If you started with a blank comp, it's likely that your background is black. Select Composition > Background Color to change the background color to white, and then preview your work with RAM preview (Composition > Preview > RAM Preview) to see the results.

Figure 4: Changing your settings makes a large difference to the effect.

Now you should see an effect that looks similar to Figure 4. Where to go from here? Try animating the Producer Position (see Figure 2). Set an initial keyframe at frame 0, and then move the keyframe around the comp over time to see what happens to the effect.