We filmed our footage indoors, and the lighting is rather dim, meaning that a muzzle flash would likely appear quite bright and overexposed. When adjusting the brightness of your muzzle flashes, keep in mind the surrounding environment of your footage. Adjust the duplicate’s opacity until the flash looks just right. If the flashes don’t appear to blend very well with your footage, duplicate the flash layer and set the duplicates Blend Mode to Add.
You can also add additional Blur effects to soften the flash if it seems too sharp. If your footage has a decent amount of motion blur, use the Zoom Blur effect to replicate this in your muzzle flash, setting the Center Position behind the flash. We used three different Heat Distortion effects, each with a different Scale, Noise Speed, and Distortion setting, to add variation to the flash’s appearance and enhance the details. Step 3: Fine-tune the muzzle flash appearance
If your footage frame rate is around 24 to 30 fps, each muzzle flash should appear for a single frame.Īs we want the flash to look different every time it appears, animate the Seed property over the whole shot.