Adding real fire to a firebreathing dragon

[Haopengyou]

I create and film a puppet show. One of the characters is a fire breathing dragon...but he has no fire How pathetic! How can I edit flames into the filmed puppet show?

[poisondeathray]

Do you mean after filming the show ? (or maybe real fire too dangerous for puppets )

2 methods are typically used to add fire in post production:

One is to composite real fire stock footage with compositing programs such as After Effects, NukeX

The other method is to generate fire in various 3D programs either internally or use voxel based and particle plugins like TurbulenceFD to generate realistic smoke & flames as well in 3D programs

[Haopengyou]

Given the fact that I live in a small apartment, I think the second method would be best. Can you give me some suggestions for 3d programs? Free is always good

[poisondeathray]

The only free one that is good would be blender

There are many tutorials if you search . Use search terms like "creating realistic fire in blender"

Warning: it's a pretty big time investment and learning curve if you don't know the basics, the interface . Also , generating the fire and smoke is one thing, you also have to composite it with the original footage. Compositing itself is another huge topic - you need to create realistic background effects, lighting, shadows


About the first post production method: The stock footage I'm talking about are pre filmed clips, that come with an alpha matte or embedded alpha. (So the fire is already generated and filmed, and won't affect your dwelling ) . You have more control if you create the fire yourself , but it's a lot more work. With this method you only have to worry about finding the appropriate clip, and compositing