animated lava

[Morbid Angel]

Hey everyone... Im kind of stuck with the delema. I have to do a lava surface that flows along the street... and well it has to look good. So i've researched a lot and did alot of tests and I can do a pritty good still frame render, but when things come down to animation it all goes to waste. Reasons are the shader doesnt work with the surfaces and so on...I'm wondering if perhaps any of you know any good tutorials or anything about making animated lava.
Here is what I got on the still

[percydaman]

I dont think that looks all that bad. there is or used to be a lava material tutorial on allan mckays website aways back.

[Morbid Angel]

yeah but the problem is this shader is hard to work with...but thanks i'll check em out

[Trapezium]

Two other possible solutions...

Search for Magmalicious at www.scriptspot.com

www.rebelthink.com has a magma shader that looks like a photo and has fully animateable parameters.

--Jon

[Morbid Angel]

magmalicious shader doesnt work with animation, well it does its a bitch tho...
i'll check out the other site...looks promising

[Da_elf]

you can send an email to the rebelthink people for a 30 day demo

[Morbid Angel]

da_elf - im already on it
thanks

[dellis]

I would try a non-particle route. Maybe try an animated mesh using FFD's or morph targets....might solve the mapping issues.

[jujubee]

I found this cool looking shader for you- not sure if it helps.

http://www.3dm-mc.com/tutorials/ps/

[Morbid Angel]

jujubee thanks...look is not the issue here, its the motion. I got now 3 shaders which all produce decent lava but they all have same issue and that is motion of fluid surfaces does not drag the lava texture with it, because its a 3d texture it stays in place and need to be animated in xyz direction and matched to the speed of fluid. But even then if you have a curvature of fluids where flow is having an S shape then this approch goes to waste.
Dellis is right the non particle approach would be next thing Im going to try.

[samuel_bubat]

Hi there,

never done lava myself.. but maybe a reactor softbody (high friction values/stiffness 0.01/avoid self interrsection on)
that rolls/flows slowly over a sloping surface could help you aniamting the motion of the lava mesh.

[Da_elf]

like he said its not the animation of the mesh he is worried about right now. right now he needs a shader that will animate with the current animated mesh he has. when a flow moves the shader needs to move with it. actually. here is an interesting approach. why not try to create an animated displacement map that displaces a grid under the ground surface so that it bulges up over the surface. you might get the right look of the lava moving. then you can use your texture also altered to have moving black and white areas going with the flow. this can be used as a mask for the red and black lava areas.. hey. anythings worth a try i guess.

[samuel_bubat]

sorry.. didn´t read carefully enough.

but you can stick procedurals to an object .
Add an UVW modifier to your object, set it to "XYZ to UVW"
Switch your procedural map coordinates to "explicit map channel" .

Now the procedural should move like expected with the mesh and it´s deformations but still looks like they are in object or world space.
Maybe that helps

cheers

[Morbid Angel]

samuel i'll try that rightnow
thanks

[Morbid Angel]

for some reason xyz to uvw didnt work. I found howerver a texturemapping option in glu3d mesh, but that did a shit ass mapping and its useless...but the texture does stick. So im trying something else now...hopegully this will work