Hello friends, welcome to this special effects tutorial from Aroha media. In this assignment, we are going to learn to animate smoke. Here we are using techniques such as shaped when shape hints, etc, which we are already familiar with. We will use the shaping technique more often in our tutorials for most of these special effects. Let's begin by drawing a rectangle, press R. Now double click on the outline and delete it. Then add bottom side of the rectangle as seen in the video.

Next, by using the selection tool and pressing down the control key, we can change the shape of the rectangle. We can make one side of the rectangle look somewhat like a saw blade as seen in the video. Here we are making the basic shape of Smoke, which needs to be animated later. Initially, we have to concentrate on getting the shape right. So that we can animate easily with the help of shape Hinz. The object which is drawn earlier should be selected first, and then we can add a gradient to it.

Next, we can open the color palette, we find the color option in Windows shortcut key shift plus f nine. Now, we can select the linear type of gradient. Then we select the gradient Transform tool, which is to be rotated and stretched, and should be matched with the ready made gradient. We set the color alpha to zero. We'll select gray for the top portion of the object. After that, we add a keyframe on the 30th frame.

Shortcut key f6 then We can apply shape to him. So far we have not seen the final result. To see the animated effects, we have to go to the first key and add a shape hint shortcut key control plus shift plus edge. One by one we can add for shape pins ABCD which can be seen one about the other. Now we have to place them at different corners as seen in the video. Now on the 30th keyframe, we are placing the shape ends to the same position earlier.

We have to switch on outline mode so that we can clearly see the drawing and we can match the shape pins easily. Now, the shape is looking green, which means that it is matching with the shape in on the first keyframe. We will first need to match all the shape hints with the earlier shape hints to see the animation preview working Now we are going to add a new hint E, which will help us to show the animated effects of smoke. Next, we can place e about D at the bottom side and on the 30th keyframe, we can place it about as seen in the video. Now we can see the animated effects of smoke from one side, we must follow the same procedure for the other side, left side. So, we have added a shaping f to the bottom side of the first key and then shifted upward on the 30th keyframe.

Now we can see the animated smoke. For better results, we can make slight changes in the placement of the same hence, press Ctrl plus Enter to preview. Now we can see a better result. We can see the jerk which is playing in the loop. It is going fast so we increase the length and preview it it looks somewhat like smoke coming from an incense stick. Now decrease the length to 40 frames.

Now we are slightly moving the position of the shape hint we can check it on first key, but it is still not matching. Hence, we have to add some more shape ins so that it will be helpful to carry the middle portion. Now we can preview the animation, which will show us the right hand side of the smoke. Notice that our own right hand side is moving smoothly in upward direction due to the additional hint. Next, we add one more hint on a positive side according to the previous step. Now we see the other side is smoothly animating.

We can check by moving the positions of the shape ins until we get the expected result Press Ctrl plus Enter to preview the result. In this way, we have formed a simple smoke animation. Hope you found this tutorial from Ottawa media useful. Thank you