I had this project sitting unfinished on my computer for a while, and I recently decided to pick it back up and complete it for release. It’s heavily inspired by “Yuru Camp” and Studio Ghibli. I used Blender 4.1 for the 3D work and After Effects for compositing.
My workflow often involves combining painted textures to create a stylized or painterly effect. This example demonstrates that.
To achieve a 2D fire effect, I used an image sequence I generated in After Effects. This method is faster to render and effective for this purpose. The fire’s shape is based on a simple cone mesh, which I animated by displacing its geometry over time to create a random, dynamic movement.
I prefer rendering with collections to produce distinct layers, which provides greater control in the compositing stage.
For example, I made rim lights for each layer and animated them. That’s what I did here.
I also experimented with mixing rendered passes with overpainted elements. This technique is best suited for static elements or shots with limited camera movement, and often necessitates the use of a tool such as EBsynth.
I also extracted lighting information by adjusting black and white values and tinting the result. These layers were then blended using the overpainted layers as a luma matte.
Most of the cool stuff happened in compositing. If you’re curious, the Blender and AE files are on my Ko-Fi page so you can see how I did it.
https://ko-fi.com/s/644de218b6
So what you think guys?