As of now, I’m in the process of designing the effects to be used in the post-production of a live-action anime fan-film, in particular based on the series “Dragonball”. The basic desire is to create effects that look plausible in a real-world setting while also appealing to the feel of the animated series.
Now, Dragonball’s signature “superhero” power is outrafeous physical strength and speed, on top of having power of a spiritual energy that they can use in combat as various blasts, beams and bombs. Whenever they’re amassing large quantities of this energy, they are surrounded by glowing ethereal energy that dances like colored flame (the color depends on the user). I decided that FumeFX would be the best way of recreating this in a way that looked proper.
I’ve gotten what I consider a decent aura effect, very much achieving the aesthetic feel I was seeking.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vO7TOCDnkAY
And when testing this same effect in the form of an explosion, the overall behavior is more or less what I desired. However, as you might be able to tell, it’s done entirely with fire simulation, which may not suffice for everything. For instance, the fire itself is very self-limiting for how much it can move before dissipating. It is not as prone to the sort of “swirls” that I desire, seeing as I want to impress that the substance is Ki, a spiritual energy that ought to look and move like liquid, vapor and flame, moving freely with glowing wisps.
While I’ve been trying to render and influence the smoke to meld better with the fire effect so as to look like parts of the same whole, it’s been difficult. I don’t like to commit to simulate at spacing values low-enough to take serious simulation time if I’m not sure the resulting effect will yield a worthwhile result. Three to six hours is an awful lot of time to realize something just isn’t working.
The main reason I desire to involve the smoke so much, is that a particular technique used in the series involves ki being gathered to a single point in the palms of the hands. How I would prefer this effect to work in live-action, would be for an already-present aura surrounding the character to provide this energy instead of it merely appearing from nowhere, energy from the aura being sucked into a center in the hands, gradually becoming compressed and glowing brighter and brighter. I tried doing this by putting a strong gravity space-warp at one side of the aura, but for some reason this went rather awry. The fire would appear to be drawn to the center of the gravity, but it neither looked the way I desired, nor did it stay, and at too high gravity value, the swirls of flame would disappear outright, save for an ember just around the source.
I’m sure that it would work a little better since smoke can curl and move as much as it wants. Either way, am I going about this right, or ought I to try something better than a gravity spacewarp?