Color

 

 

AfterBurn can use up to three colors for each volumetric puff as defined within the Color rollout. Each color is controlled by 4 elements: a gradient, interpolation controller, color position spinner, and Hue, Saturation, and Value variation spinners.

 

Color - The Color gradient defines color changes over the particle's lifetime as controlled by a user-defined interpolation method. In simple terms, the gradient tells the volumetric puff what color it's supposed to be over time. To learn how to set up gradients, you should go to the AFC and Gradient Control section of the Reference Guide.

 

There are several settings that determine how a gradient is applied to the AfterBurn effect:

 

Interpolation Controller - Next to the gradient is a small button. This button is responsible for how the gradient is interpreted over the life of the AfterBurn effect. To learn about the different Interpolation Controller options and how to control them, go to the Interpolation Controllers section of the Reference Guide.

 

 

Pos - This spinner controls the position of color dominance for each volumetric puff. A lower value tells AfterBurn to place that color more closely to the center of a particle's puff. A higher value indicates that color will be placed close to the puff's outer boundary. When two or more colors are used in combination, their relative settings determine which color will be more prominent at any given point in time. This value is also affected by how the colors are instructed to blend together via the c1->c2->c3 controls. Plus, you can animate the prominence of a gradient's colors over the course of the animation through the use of an AFC control.

 

 

Mtl. ID - This spinner lets you assign a Material ID to that color. If an ID is applied, you can use the AfterBurn Glow filter to glow this color by specifying the ID in the Glow dialog. Keep in mind that you will also have to enable Material ID channel inside FusionWorks Renderer.If you do not want this effect to be visible to RenderingEffect, set it to 0.

 

Variation - There are three spinners that affect the overall Hue (H), Saturation (S) and Value (V) of the volumetric puffs. Each one can go from 0 to 255. If you assign a value to one of these parameters, each particle that is born will differ in that particular selection from other puffs by that value. So if you want to introduce some randomness into the lightness/darkness of the AfterBurn puffs, you'd adjust the Value variation spinner to achieve that effect.

 

You can also specify how many colors you want to use on a volumetric particle.

 

 

The particle to the far left, uses one color, which is a yellow-brown. The particle in the middle uses 2 colors, the same yellow-brown, plus purple. The third particle uses three colors - grayish brown, purple, plus blue. If you want the blue to be more towards the middle, then go to the 3rd color gradient, and change the Pos. parameter to the lower value.

 

c1->c2->c3 - This set of options lets you determine how the three color gradients blend together.

  • Distance - This option changes the color of the volumetric puff from Color 1 to Color 2 and then to Color 3, based on the distance from the particle center.
  • Density - This option changes the color of the volumetric puff from Color 1 to Color 2 and then to Color 3, based on the particle density.
  • Toony - This last option gives the smoke a "cartoony" or high-contrast, posterized look. Two or three colors are required to get the Toony effect.