If you're a fan of The Hunger Games movies or if you've just got a touch of pyromania, this After Effects tutorial might be right up your alley. Inspired by the logo in the second installment of the series, Catching Fire, Michael Park walks us through creating a procedural fire effect in AE using Red Giant's Trapcode Particular. Though there are quite a few steps to follow, the result is a beautifully stylized, sparkling blaze. Continue on to find out how to get started.

Park uses several tools other than After Effects in the tutorial, like Red Giant's Trapcode Particular and Video Copilot's Element 3D, though, if you don't have Element, he explains how to you can get the desired effect without it.

As Red Giant explains at the beginning of the video, the effect is procedural, or software-driven -- you don't have to create keyframes to animate it. Park creates an object that becomes the emitter source of the flames and sparks, and after applying some turbulent noise, adds an expression that allows the noise to evolve over time. This is what makes the flames and sparks look "organic" and realistic -- not uniform -- as they come off of the emitter source.

Check out the tutorial below:

So, there you go. You can use this process to create some pretty amazing fire effects on just about anything without having to do a lot of tedious keyframing. And after seeing Park's process, you might've noticed just how easily the look can be manipulated to create other interesting effects, too.

What do you think about Michael Park's tutorial? How do you create fire effects in AE? Let us know in the comments.

[via Red Giant Software]

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