VFX Prompts
VFX prompting is physics written as instructions: name the phenomenon, its behavior over time, and the camera's seat.
About VFX prompts
The most common VFX failure is the frozen poster: an explosion that looks glued to the sky, smoke hanging like cotton, lightning drawn as decoration. The model rendered the look of an effect without its physics. Real VFX is a process — something ignites, develops, interacts with the environment, and dissipates — and a prompt that only names the end state gets a still life of one.
So describe the effect as an event with causes. Instead of "magical explosion", write what fuels it ("dust igniting outward from the impact point"), how it moves ("shockwave rippling through loose debris"), and what it leaves ("settling haze lit by the afterglow"). Particles, fluids, and light all have vocabularies — embers vs sparks, mist vs smoke, volumetric beams vs glow — and the model honors the difference when you do.
Interaction is what sells the shot: the blast that bends nearby grass, the rain that bounces off armor, the light that picks smoke out of darkness. The prompts below are tested with their real outputs, images and video alike; the strongest ones read like a physics briefing with a camera position attached.
How to write VFX prompts
- 1Name the phenomenon precisely: embers drift, sparks scatter, smoke billows, mist hangs, shockwaves ripple. Each word carries its own motion and density — "fire" is a color, "ignition" is an event.
- 2Write the effect as a timeline, especially for video: cause ("a drop hits the surface"), development ("crown splash rising"), dissipation ("droplets falling back as ripples widen"). Effects without an arc render as frozen decoration.
- 3Anchor scale with something familiar: "a shockwave the size of a city block", "sparks no bigger than fireflies". Unanchored effects default to screensaver proportions.
- 4Demand environmental interaction: "blast wave bending the trees", "rain sizzling off the heated metal", "volumetric light revealing dust in the air". Interaction is the difference between composited and real.
- 5Give the camera a job: "slow push-in through the falling ash", "wide static shot as the wave passes". A VFX shot without camera intent drifts into generic slow motion.
Frequently asked questions
Why does my AI explosion look like a static wallpaper?
Because the prompt named a state, not an event. Write the ignition source, the motion of the debris, and the aftermath haze — and for video, the order in which they happen. Explosions read as real when they have a before, a during, and an after.
How do I keep VFX from overwhelming the subject?
Give the effect a supporting role in the sentence itself: "sparks outlining her silhouette", "smoke parting to reveal the figure". When the effect is grammatically attached to the subject, the composition keeps a hero; when it stands alone, it eats the frame.
What words control particle density and size?
Density words: "a few drifting embers" vs "a dense swarm of sparks". Size anchors: "grain-of-sand debris" vs "boulder-sized fragments". Add behavior — "settling", "spiraling upward", "blown sideways" — and the particle system becomes legible instead of noisy.
