Particles are an integral part of computer graphics. Cinema, TV, and video games are using them to create impressive effects. Magic Particles is a powerful and handy tool for creating special effects that we've chosen over several other editors.

I'll try to give you some basic ideas concerning fire creation (backed by definite directions), so that you could go further in this area by yourself. The particles are not limited to the fire only; there is a whole world of wonderful effects.

In the included lesson data there is a Magic Particles emitter file, particles textures and an avi video file with a fire animation. These files can be downloaded here (click link to download).

Particle textures are very important for creating nice looking fire. Experimenting with them will give you a different fire effect every time.

Magic Particles can read the PSD file format and even its alpha-channel (for transparency), but for creating fire we will use a special blend mode (it's called Screen in Photoshop), so alpha-channel is not needed.

With this blend mode, the black colour is completely transparent while other colours lighten the picture under them. To create fire particles let’s start by painting textures 256 × 256 on a black background. Later you could resize them smaller, but it's easier to draw them when they are big. Here is what I got (Fig.01).

After the textures are ready, it's time to use the particles editor.

Run Magic Particles. At the top you can see the button panel, hit the “Create emitter”, button and after that “Create particle type inside Emitter” (Fig.03).

In the preview window you'll see something gray and odd looking. In its centre there is an emitter's icon in a square frame. Drag the emitter to the bottom edge of the screen and deselect the “Show emitter” and “Show clip area” check boxes on the bottom panel.

To load the textures, drag the files onto the texture preview window (or use the “Load texture” button; you can select multiple files in an open file dialogue window) (Fig.04).

Now go to the Color tab and check the “Intense” box (it's a special blend mode for luminous particles, corresponding with the Photoshop screen blend mode). Now click the gray rectangle at the bottom, you'll put a marker there. This way you'll specify the particles’ colour during their lifespan.

Adjust the colour as follows as shown in Fig.05.

The final marker must be black, so that the particles are faded in the end (this is why we are using the “Intense” blend features). This is the colour of the flame.

Now each particle's texture is changing in consecutive order. But we didn't make an animation, so we do not need this. Go to the “Texture” tab and enter zero in the “Change frame texture speed”. Also check the “Random texture starting frame”. Now each particle has a random texture not changing during its lifespan.

Now all we have to do is to adjust the particles motion and we’ll get a real fire! But first change the “Visibility range” (at the bottom panel) to 9% start and 95% end range visibility. This way the program doesn't show the start and the end of the effect if you don't need them.

Fire always goes up with a constant speed, emitting tongues of flames of different lengths. As it goes up it gets thinner and finally fades. Now, step by step, we'll set the particles’ motion according to this model.

Let's start with the emitter. Click on the emitter in the Emitter tree (on the left) and in the top diagram change the point emitter type to the line type.

The particles will emit from this line. It has two parameters, the blue line, which is the incline degree and the green one, which is the line length. The default parameters of 0 degrees and 100 length suit the fire nicely.

Now let's change the angle of emitting the particles. The next diagram is the “Emission direction, degrees”. Set the values 36° and 144° so that the particles go up.

Now it doesn't resemble fire very much at the moment, so switch to the Particles and hit the “Diagram Settings” button (Fig.06).