Alright, let’s talk about this little experiment I did recently, messing around with AI to generate smoke effects. It started pretty simple, really. I was working on a visual thing, needed some decent smoke, and thought, “Hey, wonder if the AI can whip this up for me?”
Getting Started
So, first thing, I opened up one of those AI image generator tools I’ve been playing with. You know the type. Didn’t really have a specific plan, just the idea: AI + Smoke = Cool? Maybe.
I started typing in prompts. Real basic stuff at first. Something like, “realistic white smoke”. Hit generate. Waited a bit. What came back was… well, it was smoke-like. Kinda puffy, more like clouds that had a bad day. Not quite what I needed.
Trial and Error Time
Okay, round two. I figured I needed to be more specific. My thinking was, maybe the AI needs more direction?
- Tried “wispy smoke tendrils against a black background”. That got me something a bit better, thinner strands, but still a bit fake looking.
- Then I went for “thick heavy industrial smoke plume”. Results were darker, denser, but again, lacked that natural flow. Looked too solid.
- I even tried stuff like “cigarette smoke in a dark room”. Got closer to the transparency I wanted, but the shapes were all wrong.
It felt like I was just throwing words at it and hoping for the best. Spent a good hour just tweaking words, adding things like “photorealistic”, “cinematic lighting”, even trying negative prompts like “no clouds”, “not solid”, “no fire”. Some results were weird, some were okay, none were perfect.
Getting Somewhere
After a lot of generating and regenerating, I started noticing a pattern. Adding details about the background and lighting seemed to help more than just describing the smoke itself. Like, “gentle smoke rising in morning light against dark wood”. This prompt, or something close to it, finally started spitting out images that looked kinda usable.
The smoke had better volume, some nice transparency, and those little unpredictable wisps that real smoke has. It wasn’t perfect, mind you. Some parts still looked a bit “computery”, but definitely a step up from the initial cotton balls.
Final Thoughts
So, what did I learn? Well, getting good AI smoke is definitely possible. But it’s not instant magic. You gotta work for it. It takes patience, lots of experimenting with different words, and understanding that you need to describe the whole scene, not just the smoke.
It’s more art than science right now, I guess. You nudge the AI in a direction and see what happens. I saved a few of the better images. Might use them as textures or elements later. It was an interesting little side quest, messing with this AI smoke thing. Took longer than I thought, but hey, that’s how you figure stuff out, right? By doing it.
