Explore Flame Painter’s Particle Systems

Harvey Bunda explains how Flame Painter’s particle systems make a range of effects possible, in part three of his series on the software

Create eye-catching painting effects in Flame Painter, with Harvey Bunda.

In this tutorial, we’ll be going through the range of particle painting systems that feature in version 4 of Flame Painter. We’ll also talk about how to use them and how to adjust their settings so you can achieve the effects you’re looking for. The system has been designed to be intuitive, and enables artist of differing abilities to add eye-catching effects to their work. There’s a range of brushes in each particle systems that are capable of creating flowing, whiplash, neon dots or even tentacle-like brushstrokes, suitable for any concept art or illustration project.

Let’s take a quick look at the characteristics of Flame Painter’s six particle systems:

Flame – this is the classic particle system that’s been part of Flame Painter since the very first version of the software.

Ribbon – select this system to create a series of particles that look like they’re swaying, waving or moving like a long piece of cloth blowing in the wind.

Follow – your particles follow the cursor precisely in this system. Liner – this particle system has a thin flat brush profile with a defined width.

Elastic – a versatile particle system with an elastic brush cursor. It’s useful for creating soft-body effects. Fuzzy – a string-based winding particle system that can stretch its particles along your chosen path.

Each particle system has different sliders for editing your brush’s properties, giving you almost limitless customisation options.

1 Get started with Flame Painter Particle systems

There are three particle systems that are included in the installation package: Flame, Ribbon and Follow. The other three – Liner, Fuzzy and Elastic – are available for download as paid add-ons available on the Escape Motions website, priced at £11 each.

2 Choose brushes to use with your particle system

Flame Painter’s brushes can be used to create all kinds of photo- and graphic effects. Each particle system comes with a set of brush presets, which means there are over 250 brushes to experiment with. There’s also a free online Brush Library from where you can download new brushes.

3 Set the Size, Blending and Opacity of your particle brush

The Brush Properties panel has the three key settings for every brush in the particle system: Size, Blending and Opacity. There are three blending modes: Normal for regular painting; Lighten is usually for light effects and darker backgrounds; and Darken for lighter backgrounds.

Define the shape of your brush 4

Depending on which brush you’re using, you can set the Count and Size of the lines or dots that influence the final appearance of the brush. Indeed, you can customise every parameter using the new Brush Creator panel – I recommend spending some time experimenting here.

5 Explore the Color palette settings

You can choose whether you want to paint with a solid colour, a gradient or with an image. The image will be mapped on the stroke, lines or dots and can be repeated on both the length and width of your strokes. HSV, RGB, HSL and HSLUV colour models are also available.

Click the orange arrow tab on the side of the Particle Statement Brush tab to access the Smoothing panel, which enables you to vary the appearance of your brushstrokes.

Here I’m using the Fuzzy particle system and Fern, the designated brush for the system, to paint some foliage under the tree.

I mostly paint my particles at minimum Position, low Pressure and semi-high Sensitivity. My brush size will vary depending on the size of the Blending effect that I’ll be using on the brush. I stick with the default Lighten setting and my line count usually remains low as well.

You can load images and shapes from Flame Painter’s image library.

On the Gradient palette you can change the Hue, Saturation and Lightness by pressing the circular grey buttons.