ATPA Lesson 9: Chrysanthemums

DISCLAIMER: The ATPA Lessons are a self-service pyro academy from the days of vPyro. I saved the lessons from the academy back in 2011 before the site went down for good, and feel that they should be accessible again, not just as a historical record of what was, but also for new pyromaniacs to learn the ropes in the same way that many of us did so many years ago. Because of their age, the videos included with the academy are of a lackluster quality, and some of the information in these lessons is outdated. In the name of history, I wish to preserve these lessons as they are, but as a recognition of how out-dated some of the advice can be, I will strikethrough and italicize the text of any information that should be ignored. If you run into questions or issues, leave a reply.

Also, the lessons ask for you to submit a video of your progress. Feel free to reply to the lessons with your submissions! Some of us old vPyro vets would love to see and comment on your progress and creations. 😊

- StickyGum32

9 – Chrysanthemums

Chrysanthemums are the grand-daddy bullfrog of pyro. They cost the most particles to make and they leave the sky brilliantly lit for 5 seconds. They're not that hard to make since you've already developed a template in previous lessons. It's quite literally a matter of changing a few settings.

Chrysanthemums are the royalty of pyro design. Unfortunately, their particle counts can get massively out of hand. The target you should be aiming for is 30K for a single effect. 10K for a willow or anything with a glittery tail. 1K for a tail-less peony or comet. Keep these targets in mind...you will be using this pyro over and over again and there's nothing worse than to make pyro that people can't use in their shows.

1) Open your classic willow from last lesson. We'll be using this as your chrysanthemum's base. Because of the way you have set this effect up already, we won't add or take away a single emitter! Huzzah!

This basic structure should be familiar now.

RED - Setup:
A) Control | B) Launch Rotation | C) Launch | D) Stop Launch | E) Burst Shape

BLUE - ProColor:
A) Throw/Outer Glow | B) Inner Glow | C) Core

ORANGE - Die-off emitter

GREEN - Glitter Tail

On the RedE emitter, increase the particle count to 40. On the BlueA emitter, increase the particle count to 4. Now you should have an effect with 160 arms. Don't count them one by one though. On the same emitter, increase the Sphere to 15.00 and decrease lifetime to 5.50 @ 30% randomness. Make sure your drag and gravity are low. My formula is 0.20 drag over 0.15 grav. We're halfway there.

2) Since BlueA is also the beginning of your ProColor formula, we'll need to adjust the glows just a tad. If you notice, right now with the effects unchanged, you might be getting a really fake brightness coming from the origin of the effect. That's because you have 160 stars emanating from the same point. To offset this ugly wash, you must delay the glow a touch. Under the particle basics window, start your outer glow solid black. Halfway in, use your normal outer glow brightness (whatever you use in your formula). And before the effect dies off, double the brightness. To understand why I'm having you do this, take a look at the lifetime of your effect. All stars start at the same point - as the effect increases in size, those stars fall away from each other so you're naturally going to want the glow to be brighter to compensate for the space between stars. And the end of the effect, the stars are hundreds of feet away from each other - so you want to increase the brightness to keep the chrysanthemum nice and bright. It's a game of compensation you will need to play when your effects get BIG.

This diagrams shows the outer glow compensation.

3) Select the BlueB emitter and increase the particle count to 200. It's the same reason why we increased the inner glow during the palms lesson. The longer your effect, the more particles you need to keep your inner glow bright. Otherwise it'll thin out and look like a weak strobe. To continue the delay we started in the outer glow, increase your start time on the inner glow to 0.10. This delays the ignition of the inner glow to 10% of the entire effect in. The result is a very quick delay that throws the stars outward a bit before they show up.

4) You're going to want your die-off emitters turned back on, so do that and change the Start Time / End Time to 0.95. Since the Chrysanthemum is such a long and large effect, you need to delay the start of the die-off emitter for it to show up. Otherwise it gets consumed by the inner glow of your ProColor.

5) And lastly, your glitter. Now you could simply go with what you have, but you're going to end up with a 50K particle effect. The beauty of large effects is that you don't need a super-full glitter to achieve the same look. There are so many stars, that you can lose some of the tail:

On the GreenA emitter:
Reduce the number of particles to 150.

On the GreenB emitter:
Increase the number of particles to 3.
Decrease the Lifetime to 1.10 @ 100% randomness.

If you've done everything right, you should have a large booming effect that looks absolutely spectacular coming in at about 25K particles. Be sure to troubleshoot any problems. The biggest one is burst height - make sure the effect has plenty of room to boom without crashing into the ground. You can continue to modify the glitter if you want a fuller tail, or if you're particle conscience - reduce the tail.

7) Name your effect, save your effect (don't forget .frw!) and submit with a video containing your chrysanthemum. If your effect crashes into the ground, we will have to ask you to resubmit - this is one of the big things about large effects - you need to be aware of how big they get.

Congratulations, you have completed all the true lessons of the ATPA Basics. Next lesson is your graduation test. Good luck!

Editors Note: This is the conclusion of the ATPA. I am loosely aware of there having been more advanced lessons created, but I am not in possession of them, nor did I ever see them back when vPyro was alive and well. Regardless, this is the entire ATPA course as it appeared on vPyro in the 2010's. Hopefully you find some good information here and create some incredible effects!