In this After Effects tutorial, Nancy Eperjesy from mettle.com shows us how to transform fire footage into 3D shapes. The new Render options available in FreeForm Pro make this super-fast and easy. Follow along as Nancy demonstrates how to set up the file and transform footage into an array of icosahedron primitives (20-sided geometric solids with congruent faces). From there, she adds a custom layout, overlapping rendered 3D footage with original fire footage. It makes for a very cool effect!

Nancy will also take you through the process of creating 3D text that uses the fire footage as a reflection map, with ShapeShifter AE

This is a great way to create custom footage from generic stock.