LOTR Series: Mount Doom Lava – Tuts+ Premium
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LOTR Series: Mount Doom Lava – Tuts+ Premium

on May 8th 2012 with 13 comments
Tutorial Details
  • Requirements: After Effects, Trapcode Particular, Maya
  • Difficulty: Intermediate
  • Run Time: 1hr 10 min
Download Source Files

Final Product What You'll Be Creating

This entry is part 1 of 4 in the series Lord of the Rings

Lord of the Rings

This tutorial will cover the process of creating a lava texture from fractal noise, utilizing luma mattes to give it depth. Using Trapcode Particular we will create blazing embers in 3D space and heat haze. In Maya we will use simple geometry to create gaps in the ground for the lava to appear below.

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Series NavigationLOTR Series: Mouth of Sauron – Tuts+ Premium»
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I'm a freelance VFX artist from Brisbane. Please check out my youtube channel JamesWhiffinVFX and my website at vfxbyjames.info  

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  • chris

    i laughed pretty hard at the queer eye of sauron part =]

  • Adam

    Probably won’t get a membership just for this, but I will go and listen to that soundtrack all day now.

  • Adam

    Anyone else miss the days of useful tutorials?

    • http://vfxbyjames.info James Whiffin
      Author

      Care to elaborate?

    • Cro Magnon

      Anyone miss the days when people did not hide behind anonymity?

      Cro

      • Cro

        That comment was meant for Adam.

    • xandercorp

      There’s no need to elaborate, I understand what he’s talking about. This seems like a complete waste of time to me. What possible use could one have for creating scenes that are first off, done way better in the original and secondly, relevant only to a specific type of people.

      Most of the featured stuff here is pretty easy to do, or completely useless, the only new thing is the lava floor and that’s not even interesting. Oh let me guess, 4 perspective tracking, some masks, fractal noise set up in 2 colors, some glow, a distortion map and voila! Amazing.

      I do appreciate you took the time and tried to do some tutorials to maybe teach others, but there’s a huge concern with weather it’s useful or not. Making tutorials for the sake of adding more content should be a no-no.

      • http://vfxbyjames.info James Whiffin
        Author

        I hear what you’re saying but completely disagree. I don’t watch every tutorial on aetuts, but I watch the preview and remember what it was about. I have a vast amount of techniques and tips at my disposal if I ever need to create a niche effect (in this case lava). For others, this would be a great way to learn more about using maya with ae.

      • Alex

        Most of the tutorials on this site aren’t designed to teach you how to make only what the preview shows.
        The point of most tutorials are to teach you a better workflow, little tips and tricks, and how to use the tools creatively to make what you want.

        Just because this tutorial has a focus on Sauron’s eye (for example), doesn’t mean that the techniques used only apply to making his eye. The idea is that the viewer learns new ways to utilise tools to apply to their own projects. Asking “Oh, when am I ever going to make Sauron’s eye?” is like asking “When will I ever use facial motion capture in AE?”. That’s not the point…

        Plus, James debunked your guess at the floor lava, so I guess that’s an indication that there’s more effort put into it than you thought.

      • Shmilfke

        I completely agree with James.
        These might not be useful every day but they’re great to give a quick scan through, and then remember them for when you DO have to put on a lava effect etc.
        Keep it up AETP!

  • http://www.creativedojo.net VinhSon Nguyen

    Xandercorp, of course the scenes in the original are done better because they’re done by a team of visual artists with such a high budget, you seriously cannot compare that to an individual’s work on a tutorial website. Secondly, it’s impossible to create a tutorial that is useful to “everyone”. Most tutorials are appealing to only certain or specific people. (Example: Mograph tutorials vs VFX)

    What’s important is the technique and workflow used in the tutorial. Maybe you’re too experienced for these types of tutorials, but it may be useful for beginners to learn basic tracking, composites, and basic usage of the Fractal Noise (which a lot of beginners think is useless).

    Anyways, it’s also nice to hear feedback, thanks for your input. Good work too James. :)

    • Xandercorp

      I wasn’t questioning where when we’d ever need to recreate the Lotr scenes necessarily, but the use of the techniques involved over all, you’re right, for someone lacking in experience this might prove useful, but then again… aren’t there quite a number of tutorials for those lacking in experience? :-)
      I recently saw some tutorials on the new features of AE CS6, those are mind blowing, those would make great topics, I’m sure! The new CS6 renders the use of plug-ins such as Shape Shifter as useless, it’s got layer bending and many other things that would, I’m sure shorten the distance between start and finish on any project…

      In any case, there are a lot of ways one can ‘skin a goat’ using AE, the point I was making is that I’ve seen similar techniques used in quite a few tutorials before, they present no interest to me, or, in my opinion, even start-ups. Why? Well… I know my way around AE and I doubt I’ll find real purpose for these in particular; as for the start ups, why not watch the old ones, learn from those? Is there a constant need of remixing old tutorials?

      I could have a debate here about the usefulness of a lot of tutorials on the site, but I think we’d be better off implementing a ‘was this useful?’ poll at the base of each one… Not many people comment, which is a shame because it would only lead to better tutorials and more useful knowledge, for everyone…

  • Valstorm

    I’ve lost a lot of respect for the envato tuts sites in the last few months. Before they decided to lay heavy emphasis on premium tuts I was learning something new every week – this hub was full of useful and interesting tutorials.

    Now it seems like the meagre content we’re left with is mostly watered down, second-hand trash that is neither appealing for beginners nor useful to the seasoned community who have supported these sites for so long.

    Please note – I’m not specifically talking about this LOTR tutorial, just the premium plugs in general.