The Best 2D Smoke in After Effects - Animation Tutorial

A 2D animation tutorial on how to create the most perfect looping smoke effect using Adobe After Effects. This tutorial is suitable for beginners - intermediate users. Please leave a comment if you'd like me to explain anything I skimmed over.

I'm uploading new motion design & animation tutorials every Thursday! (Sometimes Monday too)

►Please tag me on Instagram @ben_marriott_ if you've used any of the techniques from this video so I can see what awesome things you create

►Find me elsewhere!

►Music:
Massive thanks to madmomentsgo for providing that amazing music for my intro!

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
~ God bless Kevin ~

[omidr.g]

A moment of silence for those who haven't found this channel yet...
Quality content, ladies and gentlemen!

[KABOBkabob]

I definitely expected Turbulent Displace but blur + levels is a really clever and more effective way to achieve that. Great stuff as always

[laurentpastorelli]

if you press "alt+s" you directly generate key frame in scale, same for" alt+p", "alt+r" and so on...
great tutorial as usual, Thanks Ben!

[passion_proh-jects]

'Smoke armpit'... of of those things you never knew you needed... Thank you!

[iamYork_]

Love the Vegas "hack" for a stroke but you can also attain the same result by adding a "Layer Style > Stroke"

[BobsonChannel]

It's just amazing what i have learned in the past two month from you *-* i can't thank you enough for your tutorials and your other content!

[TheRampax]

Using Vegas to put a stroke on a layer using its alpha is a really good trick. Ive never been able to find a good way of doing this. Cheers.

[seencapone]

To apply a stroke to shapes like this, I always prefer to use Stylize>Roughen Edges with the 'Roughen Color' option. You can change the thickness of the stroke by tweaking the 'Border' and 'Edge Sharpness' values. 
This method also has an added benefit of softening/distorting the shape even more depending on the 'Scale' value of the roughen. Set the 'Scale' really low, like 10, to diffuse-granularize the edges; or set it really high, like 500, for a softer turbulence. You can set the 'Fractal Influence' parameter to 0 if you don't want any distortion at all and just keep the stroke.
Roughen Edges is one of my most-used secret-weapon effects, it's pretty powerful once you get the hang of it.

[RenanFelicianoOn]

Your teaching skills are absolutely flawless. Perfect videos!

[sunshizzleyou]

After spending years working in all the Adobe programs nothing is quite as creative and fun as after effects.

[Koolbite]

i think you've just dethroned ECA as the best Motion design channel out there. Congrats !

[MagicLink]

Saw this on Instagram yesterday and was really excited for it!

[DesmoSaze]

I wasn't completely happy with Vegas. I tried "Find Edges" and then "Linear Key Color" to achieve the same result. I got back to Vegas in the end but both technique have their own ups and downs. I thought it was worth mentioning.

Thank for this great tutorial Ben, I am always amazed by what you share with us <3


I can't wait to see what you will bring to us for 2020, this is very promising

[KtenEditing]

not even really sure why but I enjoyed seeing you build the effect next to the finished comp, thanks for this one!

[JamesDaly]

Ooh so flowy and organic! That levels trick was suuuper clever

[MashaErIllustration]

This was the most effective and simple way to create smoke. Huge thanks!

[FrazNinja]

ive been looking forward to this after seeing it on your insta!

[chingsdiary]

3:56 (mouth from right to left)
I'd never thought of using alpha channel and gaussian blur together!!! Brilliant!
9:42 I just learnt from other tutorials that pressing 0 is better than pressing space because it loads before playing instead of playing while loading.

I practiced this project for 4 times and I picked up something different in your example and my project. Really learnt a lot, thx!

[JaredClarkGay]

Ben I really can't get enough of your tutorials. Excellent stuff.

[Someone]

I’m so happy I found your YouTube account