Here’s a technique for creating smoke in Flash using the lighten blending mode and motion editor.
Author: tom green
Tom is a professor of Interactive Multimedia through the Humber Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning's School of Media Studies. Like all faculty in the program, Tom believes his students deserve to be taught by instructors who are regarded as experts in their field and whose knowledge of their subject is current with industry best practice.
Similar Articles
[...] 2 Cool Tutorials Ever wanted to create smoke using Adobe Flash – Tom Green’s got your answer over on his latest tutorial: Tom Green: Flash for Smoke [...]
Good Tutorial
Thanks Rajesh, most appreciated.
Why does my smoke movie clip turn all white when I select the blending mode to Lighten? I made the smoke movie clip in photoshop w/the clouds filter.
Thanks for any help.
Kristine
Don’t have a clue other than the fact the colors of the pixels in the image in a blend mode interact with the colors of the pixels under them.The issue could be the underlying image is lighter than the smoke.
Thanks Tom, you’re right.
My underlying image is a white background & the smoke is too light to show up enough. I’ll try to figure some other way around it.
It’s a great tutorial though!
Thanks for the tutorial. I animated some steam rising from a cup of hot chocolate and it looked really good. I couldn’t find the motion editor panel, though, maybe because I’m using CS3. J
That would be the reason. You can use Tweens and the Free transform tool in CS3.
Its nice and helpful tutorial. Thanx
Nice little tutorial….. the new motion editor is a totally different way of working. I am an Adobe Certified Instructor, and when I teach photoshop tips and tricks I usually create steam or vapor in rising from a coffee cup…. You used to have to use PNG(24) to get that effect in flash….. pretty cool now that there are blend modes!
I might have to combine the tutorial on creating the vapor and then animating it in flash.
P.S. Using the clouds filter creates a mixed blurred pixels throughout, try something simple like drawing it with the airbrush and then blurring it. But I will put a tutorial up on creating smoke in photoshop on my site. Stay tuned!
headTrix, Inc.
An Adobe Certified Training Provider / An Interactive New Media Agency
http://www.headTrix.com | http://www.headTrixTraining.com
310.450.0122|info@headTrix.com
Consulting | Design | Development | Training
This was a great video. I never knew tutorials where this fun I thought they where a bunch of mubo jumbo but these are great keep up the great work tom. I have one question for tom can I use flash to make myspace banners and animated cartoons.
Aww i get to where you scale the smoke, then it brakes off with commercials! Is the full length available somewhere else?
Thanks, good tutorial, involving, I didn’t feel like I was going to sleep! Comin’ right at ya!