What's the best software and/or plugin effect to produce a fog effect?
By the way I have AE7, Maya, and Vegas Pro.

Thanks,
Troy

The quick and easy way- at least for me- is to go into AE and create a new solid layer. Apply the "Fractal Noise" Effect, draw a simple mask around where you want the fog to be visible, and feather the edges on the mask. Next, animate the evolution of the fractal noise, and finally, set your layer to something like Screen or Overlay to show the translucency/transparency. If you want to get fancier, you can animate your mask edges and/or experiment with different variations of the Fractal Noise effect.

I'm a 3ds Max guy myself, but I'm sure Maya has some volumetric fog effects or tools. It usually involves drawing out a bounding box or something like that to provide a 3-dimensional area for the fog, and then a whole slew of options and menus. Using a 3D app like that can get complicated very quickly- not to mention time consuming! Creating 3D fog takes a huge toll on system resources and rendering, which is why I try to "fake it" using 2D effects in AE as much as I can. Good Luck!

I think what I've used is called particle illusion bundle for after effects, it's really slow to work with but there's a lot of control and you get realistic results. Animations usually just pan a fog image across, if you want it simple.

So how would I produce a fog effect looks like its drifting from the back of the clip to the front? Could I turn a solid on it's z axis and then use the fractal noise effect, but would that look too flat?

Also what about volumetric depth and camera blur? Would that be what the 3D program is for? If so, how would I get a 3D project into AFX? Can I import a 3d file into AFX like I can a Premiere project?

Been after doing this for ages, can't get a realistic fog. I want to produce a ghostly mist that slowly appears on a street, but there is action in the clip as well, so my mist needs to gradually cover from back to front of the clip.

Any ideas?

Thanks

So how would I produce a fog effect looks like its drifting from the back of the clip to the front? Could I turn a solid on it's z axis and then use the fractal noise effect, but would that look too flat?

You could rotate a solid layer in AE, but it will look flat and unnatural.

Also what about volumetric depth and camera blur? Would that be what the 3D program is for? If so, how would I get a 3D project into AFX? Can I import a 3d file into AFX like I can a Premiere project?

You can't import a 3D file directly into After Effects. You would need to render a series of frames in your 3D app and then import those in to After Effects. Usually, what I do is render out of 3ds max as RPF files with an embedded alpha channel. Then, I'll import the RPF files as a sequence of stills into my AE project.

Been after doing this for ages, can't get a realistic fog. I want to produce a ghostly mist that slowly appears on a street, but there is action in the clip as well, so my mist needs to gradually cover from back to front of the clip.

Creating something that looks realistic and convincing is very challenging. It can take a very long time to get a good grasp of how some of the different 3D apps out there work. On top of that, compositing those 3d graphics into your video is a whole other challenge!

If you're looking to learn more about using 3d applications, check out the forums at cgscociety.org They're just as great as DVinfo, but it's all about CGI.

Hope this helps!

see if this will help you out....

http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorial.html?id=104

I'll keep playing. I'm newish to AFX and even newer to 3d. Seen videocopilot stuff before, that's what I thought would work but not quite right.

Maybe I'm being too adventurous :)

Cheers for the info!

Russ