Seamless Loop for Flames

[stelees]

First off, long time no visit - annoying when health gets in the way of an enjoyable habit.

Now I have a question but I don't think it is achievable what I want to do (well a friend wants me to do). A friend of mine who has just gotten her first little unit wants me to make a little animated fireplace scene for her. Now I know there are plenty of 10 hour fire place scenes videos and the like on line but she wants me to make the little container and then just have the fire coming from that and she is going to just run the animation on a small screen in the corner of her living room.

Now the trick is seeing if there is a way to make a fire sim but into a seamless loop so she can just have this going for any length of time that she wants to.

Does anyone have any tricks on how to achieve this?

Thanks.

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Hey, welcome back!

There is no ideal recipe for looping I'm afraid - you just have to find a start and end frame that look as close as possible. In Phoenix there is a loop overlap duration, which is the number of frames after the end frame where the fluid gradually blends into the start frame, so the tools to play with is this duration and the actual start and end frame.

On the positive side, flames are one of the best things you can loop - unlike pouring liquid or other setups where the start and end frame are usually nothing alike, with fire it should be a matter of a few tries before you get something that loops (relatively) smoothly.

Cheers