GIMP Tutorials

How to Make Fire or Flames with GIMP:

This is what we will be making:

Step 1: Open up a new canvas. Make it any size you want. Mine is 400×300.

Step 2: Fill canvas with black and make a new transparent layer.

Step 3: The fire will be made with 3 colors, red, yellow, and white. With your red color the basic shape of the fire, Similar to below.

Step 4: With your yellow brush make the second layer, make sure there is still red showing. See below.

Step 5: Repeat, now with white. Once your done with the red white and yellow, it should look similar to the screen below.

Step 6: The fire looks like it has been done by a 3-year-old. Now you will need to add a gaussian blur(Filters–>Blur–>Gaussian Blur). Set Vert and Horiz to 100. It should look similar to the image below.

Step 7: It looks alright but still doesn’t look realistic. Now make a new transparent layer and goto Filters–>Render–>Clouds–>Solid Noise. See the settings similar to below. X-Value=13 Y-Value=7

Step 7: Duplicate the layer with the clouds.

It should look like this by now;

Step 8: Now create a new transparent layer. And goto Filters–>Render–>Clouds–>Plasma. Turbulance=5

Step 9: And now goto Layers–>Colors–>Desaturate. And then set both cloud layers options to Overlay.

IF you want a little more random movement on the fire you can just goto filters–>distort–>IWarp. And play around with it.

All done!

1. 
   Nobody said...
   1:08 pm - January 16th, 2009

   I’ve done as you said to, but I get to the part of the clouds and it turns into the clouds, and the flames disappear.
   What happened?
   What should I do?

2. 
   admin said...
   1:47 pm - January 16th, 2009

   You have to set both layers that are clouds to ‘Overlay’. This basically makes those layers transparent but applies the texture to the underlying layers.

3. 
   I said...
   11:13 am - May 9th, 2009

   This works completely. Good job!

4. 
   Amine said...
   12:39 pm - June 22nd, 2009

   hi,
   well i have a simple question : how to create a new transparent layer please ?
   i am just a nooby in gimp
   (this is my first day)

   thanx in advance

5. 
   Amine said...
   12:56 pm - June 22nd, 2009

   ok now i know the layers since i did a researsh but i still dont understand ho to :
   Duplicate the layer with the clouds.

6. 
   admin said...
   1:24 pm - June 22nd, 2009

   For new transparent layer -

   From the menubar, choose: Layer, New Layer. Make sure the ‘Transparent’ radio button is selected and hit OK.

   To Duplicate layers, make sure you have made ‘active’ the layer you wish to duplicate. (Viewing the Layers Dialog is helpful…CTRL+L) Activate (highlight) the layer in the Layers Dialog and from the menubary choose Layer, Duplicate Layer.