Creating a giant sandstorm

[AC5L4T3R]

Hey, I'm looking to recreate the effect seen in this video https://youtu.be/Z2yyUAr5t6g?t=123 and here in Mad Max https://youtu.be/h9RhcBG8UYg?t=37 but I'm not really sure where to start. There's a good Fume FX tutorial here so could I follow it and recreate similar in Phoenix?

Cheers

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Hey,

I'd suggest you don't use particles, but instead emit from a long geometry and use Plain Force to drive the smoke sideways. Make sure you are using massive vorticity with a strong large-scale factor, PCG conservation, Multi-Pass advection and 1 step per frame. You might not use temperature in the simulation at all, or you might use temperature of little above 300 if you want the smoke to rise up, or little below 300 if you want it to fall down. Once you get the shape right, you can retime it using the Time Bend resimulation in General-Purpose mode, which would work quite well when there is no visible fire. Otherwise the Slow Down method may eat up the details.

Once you get started, please ask if you need any help

Cheers!

[AC5L4T3R]

Thanks Sveitlin It's given me a good base and I'm close to getting what I want. However, I'm struggling to get the "big billows" of rolling smoke. I've got a grid size of 215/100/20 and my emitter object is 200m wide 5m high. Here's what I've got so far.

[AC5L4T3R]

Thanks Sveitlin It's given me a good base and I'm close to getting what I want. However, I'm struggling to get the "big billows" of rolling smoke. I've got a grid size of 215/100/20 and my emitter object is 200m wide 5m high. Here's what I've got so far.

Currently looks like giant KFC chicken!

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Nice I would guess that the surface vorticity is too high and this disrupts the large scale rolling motion. Also, depending on how fast the simulation unfolds, you might try boosting the wind strength and then retiming it to a slower pace - the rolling is better when the smoke speed is higher.

[AC5L4T3R]

Does the wind strength come from a wind helper? Or is there an option I've missed in the sim container?

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Ah, it should come from a Plain Force - you should better use this to drive the storm front. A regular max wind would also work, though it's a bit slower.

[AC5L4T3R]

Ahh I already had the Plain Force set to 100m.

[AC5L4T3R]

I've got to this now which is pretty much spot on with what I want. However, the cell resolution is pretty low so the detail isn't great. If I raise the resolution the look completely changes. Is there any way I can increase the quality without changing the look?

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Yup - again resimulation, but without the time-bend stuff. You could simply up-res, or you could add wavelet as well