Best way to add detail to Phoenix Smoke?

[ecraft]

Since there is no support for wavelet turbulence at this time, what is the best way to add more detail to smoke simulation? I am in need of more tendrils/wispy fingers coming on the outer edges of the smoke. I tried using the particle texture, but it appears that you need a rather dense particle system to get any effect, or I am not totally understanding the usage/settings of the Particle Texture. Or is a grid with more cells the only way to go at this point?

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

-Eric

[Ivaylo Katev]

of course the particle texture is not always needed, for example the included rocket scene uses only a celullar texture.
try with normal texture as starting point, let say cellular. if the result is good enough for a static picture, you can go ahead and use the particle texture to create movement. put the prelimenary prepared cellular texture into the slot of the particle texture, set the radius to be big enough for overlapping the neighbour particles and this should be enough. for faster adjustemt of the particle texture you can render some flat geometry colored with it, this helps a lot.

regards,
ivo

[ecraft]

I am looking to add more detail to the shape, which also follows the motion of the fluid. The cellular adds detail similar to a pyroclastic effect, where I am looking for more wispy/trail detail.

I am guessing using the UVW Output is the best route to do this, but not sure the best way to get what I am looking for.

-Eric

[Ivaylo Katev]

i'm sceptical about the uvw mapping, it will produce thread-like appearance of the smoke. the particle texture doest exatly what you need, but is slower unfortunatelly. i think we have some short movies at the office made with particle texture, tommorow i can attach one.

[ecraft]

That would be great. I tried to figure out how the particle texture is suppose to work in the Nuke sample, but really couldn't figure out the where and how to use it.

-Eric

[Ivaylo Katev]

here is a short part of the nuke scene, rendered with particle texture.

[ecraft]

Not really seeing any detailed/motion added to that versus not using particle texture.

-Eric

[Ivaylo Katev]

hm, i will upload a version without particle texture and version without displacement at all to make base for comparison.

[tradz]

Ivaylo In your smoke video scene it's the original or modified nuke from document Phoenix folder?
But how to use the Particle Texture and how to put it ?

[Ivaylo Katev]

it was the original scene at some stage, but now the scene is modified and does not use displacement. the particle texture displacement is too slow, really you can make low res sim to look like a detailed one, but the total time simulation+rendering is lower if you just use high resolution.
anyway, you can try it, i'm convinced that the particle texture can be useful tool in many cases as starting point you can try to use it to shade some geometry, just put it into the diffuse slot or the self illumination slot of the material.

[tradz]

I reduced my nuke scene of smoke which was at 0.41 to a cell size of 0.3 the result is a bit better With more details! What is your cell size in your video? I put Phoenix Particle texture in standard material and drag it To the object is what to do?
How I Can create the same smoke that you? How I Can Change the colors and add a bit fire?

[Ivaylo Katev]

I put Phoenix Particle texture in standard material and drag it To the object is what to do?

for shading geometry yes, of course you have to select the particle system that will produce the texture. in the simplest case the texture is white near to a particle and black away from any particles.

How I Can Change the colors and add a bit fire?

open the "colors and transparency" dialog and tweak the curves. if you have experience with vray environment fog, the concept here is the same - three render elements for the volume, diffuse color, emissive color, opacity. each of them can be mapped to any physical channel from the simulation, and the curves play the same role as the curve in the "output" texture map of the max. for some fire you have to tweak the emissive element of the shader.

[Rchapin]

Is particle texture anywhere In the maya release? I can't seem to find it.

[vlado]

Is particle texture anywhere In the maya release? I can't seem to find it.

It's in the nightly builds; it's a 3D texture in the Hypershade.

Best regards,
Vlado

[vlado]

Is particle texture anywhere In the maya release? I can't seem to find it.

It's in the nightly builds; it's a 3D texture in the Hypershade.

Best regards,
Vlado