How to Create a FIRE HAND EFFECT

Hey what's up guys, welcome back. Today I'm going to be showing you how I created the fire hand effect inside of After Effects. It's where you take a fire element and track it onto your hand so that when you move it around the scene, it looks like you're holding some fire. I like this effect a lot because it teaches you multiple techniques that you can use with different effects inside of After Effects. So now I'm going to show you the effect that I created, but before I do, really quick, I want to thank the sponsor of today's video, Skillshare. Skillshare is an online community for creative people and those who are curious about learning. With a premium membership, you have access to thousands of classes on topics such as design, photography, and video. It's the perfect place to learn from experts in their field so that you can learn some new skills yourself. 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But alright guys, now let's get on with the rest of the video. For this effect, I shot one clip and it was of me acting out like I was igniting some fire with my hand and then waving my hand around like it was on fire. And then for the fire, I used a stock footage element from Action VFX. And I downloaded a clip from their small Ground Fires pack and I'll leave a link down in the description for Action VFX if you want to check out some of their stock footage. But alright, so that's all I needed for the effect. Now let's jump inside of After Effects. So inside of After Effects, I have my footage added to a new composition. The first thing I did was select the footage and duplicated it by hitting Ctrl D on the keyboard and named the top layer Finger Masks. Next I used Mocha to track a few of my fingers and this created masks so that the fire looks like it's behind my fingers. And so I can also use the tracking information to lock the fire onto my hand's movement. So I made sure the playback quality was set to full, selected the Finger Masks layer, and then went up to Animation and selected to track inside of Mocha. Inside of Mocha, I came down and clicked and dragged the playhead so that it started at about the halfway point of the clip, making sure my hand was completely in frame. Then I went up and selected the Create X Spline tool and created a mask around one of my fingers. To close up the mask, I just right clicked on the mouse after I was done creating all of the points. To round the tip of the mask to match with my finger, I clicked and dragged the top point of the mask and this created a curved point. And then I did the same thing for two of my other fingers and this created three different mask layers. I only had to do this for three of my fingers, the ones that I wanted the fire to be behind. So after all the masks were created, I came down and selected to track forward. When shooting my footage, I made sure not to move my hand too quickly because the more motion blur on my hand, the more difficult it is to track. So once it was done tracking forward, it notified me that it lost a track towards the end for when I moved my hand too quickly. But this was okay because that's when I'm acting like I was waving my hand to extinguish the fire and I don't need the footage to be tracked for that part. So next I went back to the point where I started tracking forward from and then came over and selected to track backwards from that point. Once it was done tracking in that direction, I played it back and made sure the masks were tracked properly around my fingers. Next I came up and saved the project right here and then closed Mocha. Now back inside of After Effects, I made sure I had the finger masks layer selected and came into the matte tab on the Mocha effect. I came down and selected to create AE masks and this took the masks that I created inside of Mocha on each one of my fingers and created them here inside of After Effects. So then after that, I hit F on the keyboard to bring up the mask feather and changed the feather on all three of those masks to 5. Next I went up to layer and selected to create a new null object. Then I selected the finger masks layer again and went into the tracking data tab on Mocha and selected create track data. I selected one of the layers and it didn't matter which one I picked and I hit OK. Then I changed the export option to corner pin support motion blur and changed layer export to the null object and then hit apply export. After that, I grabbed the fire element and dragged it into my composition, placing it right underneath the finger masks layer. I changed the view mode on the fire to add and then grabbed the pick whip and parented it to the null object. Then I rescaled and positioned the fire element to fit in my hand. I trimmed the fire to start right as I'm opening my hand and to end when I'm waving my hand. Now if I play that back, you can see the fire is attached to my hand and looks like it's behind my fingers. You can see here though that the fire wasn't perfectly behind my fingers for every frame. So to fix that, I created a mask around the fire, making sure the bottom of that mask was close enough to the fire so that it got rid of that edge that was coming through on the side of my hand. And I made sure I hit the stopwatch for the mask path and went through and adjusted this mask to any frame that I needed to clean up the fire on. I also changed the feather on that mask to 15. Then I added the curves effect to the fire and adjusted the RGB curve so that it wasn't so yellow. Next, I added the glow effect to the fire element layer and made sure it was above the curves effect. I changed the glow threshold to 0%, glow radius to 60%, and the glow intensity to 0.1. I also changed the glow operation to screen, the glow colors to A and B colors, and color looping to sawtooth A greater than B. Then I duplicated that glow effect and changed a couple of things. I changed the glow intensity to 1 and then came down to the color A and changed it to an orangish red color. For the part when I'm opening my hand, I brought the scale of the fire down to 0, created a keyframe, and then scaled it back up over two frames so that it looked like it was igniting. And then I keyframed the position for the fire layer and re-centered it in my hand for those few frames. Next, I went up to layer, created a new adjustment layer, naming it heat wave, and placed it underneath the finger masks layer. And I trimmed this to be the same length as the fire layer. Then I went back up to the effects and presets tab and typed in turbulent displace and added that on to the heat wave layer. Then I changed the amount to 5 and the complexity to 3.5. Then I created a mask on this layer that was around the fire element. After that, I parented this adjustment layer to the null object. Next I went to the beginning of the adjustment layer and hit the stopwatch for the evolution, creating a keyframe at 0. Then went to the end of the adjustment layer and changed the amount to 70. Next, I created another adjustment layer, naming this one hand glow, and stacked this above all the layers. I changed the view mode to soft light and made this the length of the fire layer as well. Then I went into the fire element layer and copied the bottom glow effect and pasted that on to the hand glow adjustment layer. I left all the settings the same except I changed the glow intensity to 1.5. Then I created a mask on this adjustment layer around just my hand and increased the feather to 350. I also parented this adjustment layer to the null object and all of this is what created a glow on my hand. Then the last thing that I did was come down and turn on motion blur for the fire layer. And after all that, I was finished up. I just added in some sound effects, which by the way, you can find on ActionVFX as well. They actually have a free fire sound effects pack right now, which is great and I used for this effect too. Alright guys, that's it for today's video, thank you so much for watching. Remember to check out that link below if you're interested in joining Skillshare and getting your 2 month free membership. But alright guys, that's it for today, take care and I'll see you soon.