Comments on: Smokey Text from a Genies Lamp

By: Rich

Rich — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 09:59:50 +0000

Thanks Jasmine. I’m launching a new version of my site in a few days (hopefully!) and I intend to put more tutorials etc on it, so yeah, I’ll try make a quick genies lamp tutorial when I get a chance. Check back in a week or so and I’ll try get something sorted out!.

By: Jasmine

Jasmine — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 09:55:27 +0000

Hey, love the effect! Do you have tutorial on how to do the lamp in 3ds max? (:

By: annzs

annzs — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 21:29:33 +0000

hello this looks awesome man…. can you please tell me is there any tutorial how to do this ?

Thank you and cheers

By: Rich

Rich — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 22:24:54 +0000

Hi Scott. There’s no reason the way I did it wouldn’t work, but it would be a very slow process to animate it using the exact workflow I used.

I’ve clearly not got round to doing a little ‘how-to’ for this yet – but the basic steps involved (using a budget Wacom Volito II and Photoshop) were…

Create a new layer and sketch out the word and it’s basic form using a basic round brush with slighly feathered edges and slightly varying amounts of transparency
Duplicate that layer a few times, setting the opacity of one ‘main’ version of it to say 75%, then the others at around 5%, so they just add a bit of depth and interest after you’ve done the next step
Open the Liquify Filter (Ctrl + Shift + x on a PC) and go wild and experiment with it
Persevere. My first attempt at smoke lettering wasn’t quite right, so I just kept un-doing and re-doing the Liquify effect on multiple copies of the text until it looked half decent and quite natural

So, if you were doing that for 24 frames for every second of your animation you’d be there for a while.

Chances are (if you’re using After Effetcs?) you may be able to replicate something similar using a few copies of the text layer with some of AE’s warp type filters applied? At least that should get you a fairly convincing smokey, shimmering letter effect – maybe

As for having the letters form themselves from thin air as the actors are speaking I’m not sure how I’d go about that. I think my first port of call would be to experiment with Trapcode Particular.

Anyway, hope that helps a bit Scott!

By: Scott Banks

Scott Banks — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 00:30:20 +0000

I’m working on a title for a video named “Mt Zen” and I want smoke blowing out of the actors mouth to form smoke letters…. I would need to do the smoke as a transparency letters and add them to the talent shots as a composite. Would your method work for a composition shot like that? Can you export the letters and retain transparency so it can be applied to back plate?

I really dig this work it is the best I have seen and I have looked.

Thanks,
Scott

By: andrew bainbridge

andrew bainbridge — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 22:38:25 +0000

Hi,

I love this effect, great work. I’d be really grateful if you could walk me through how you did it?

Cheers

Andrew