VFX Testing: Sparks

The next test that I wanted to do was sparks as when my time machine is disappearing there will be sparks coming off the sides to show that it is running on full power. For this I followed the best tutorial that I could find which was actually for creating sparks on a title screen but it worked well on its own without the words.

I first started by adding in an orange solid and then adding a CC Particle World effect onto it to create the particles that I was going to alter later on, and changed some of the setting so that it generated the particles correctly.

We then added key framing onto the position so that it started on the left and moved over to the right and then also changed the birth rate so that the particles increased as it moved across and then stopped at the end.We then also changed a lot of the settings around so that we had sparks flying in the right direction with the correct velocity and also the right size. In this newer version of After Effects I also added in a glue to the floor effect so that when the sparks landed they would stay on the ground for a second.

I then added a colour correction onto it and picked exposure and changed it up to 4 so that it looked brighter and then added a glow onto it so that it looked more realistic.

I then duplicated the layer and changed the velocity and gravity down so that the sparks flew slightly different and then took off the motion blur so that the particles looked slightly different for the final part of the test. I am a lot happier with how this test went and it definitely looks better than the smoke and seems to be easy to add into my final video when needed.