The fire effect is a popular computer-based visual effect often animated in real time.

The display process behind this page uses a solid noise engine based upon the open-source image manipulation program GIMP to create a grayscale color map to represent the fire pattern. The noise can be controlled in both the horizontal and vertical direction to give the fire more volume and turbulence to its appearance.

A color map having different shades of four basic fire colors (black, red, yellow, and white) is applied to create the synthetic fire image. For your convenience, an optional text string with simplified embellishment options can be specified to appear in the foreground.

This page combines the GIMP clouds solid noise filter and the color map plug-in filter to create the fire effect as illustrated in the right picture. There are twenty variations from the basic fire color pattern. These variations include blue and magenta tints designed to blend well to your graphics with a minimum amount of adjustments.

1. Random seed. Click the following button for a random seed to generate a different fire pattern. Unlike other noise-based pattern generation, the same fire color and pattern can be regenerated based upon a known seed value, turbulence setting, and texture values.

  

2. Turbulence. Choose this mode to give the fire more turbulence in volume and strength at low vertical texture size. Without this selection, the fire appears out of focus at high texture setting.

3. Horizontal texture size.  
Enter a value to indicate the horizontal texture of the fire. A larger value creates more flame sequences in the fire pattern along the horiontal direction. A lower value creates a gradual blend of colors from red to yellow similar to the effect of a typical linear gradient.
(Default 120)

4. Vertical texture size.  
Enter a value to indicate the vertical texture of the fire. A small value (less than 20) simulates realistic fireplace fire with tall flames. A larger value creates more flame sequences in the fire pattern along the vertical direction.
(Default 20)

Click to generate the background fire with your current choice of parameters in a separate window.

The generated image will be automatically removed from the server approximately in one hour. Right click on the generated image and choose "Save Picture As..." or "Save Image As..." to download to your computer.


5. Ceiling percentage.  
Enter a value to indicate the percentage of black to fill in at the top of the fire image. Choose this option if you want a particular fire pattern with a limited flame height. Valid range is from 0 to 100 percent.
(Default 0)

6. Image width.   

7. Image height.   

8. File type:
JPG file PNG file w/ transparency Photoshop PSD file w/ layers

JPG format displays transparency as white. Choose the PNG option if you want background transparency. The Photoshop PSD format provides the highest image quality and most flexibility. Image components such as text, shadows, background are placed on separate layers.