Creating a flare

[hunter_williams]

Any suggestions on how to easily make a flare in Phoenix for Maya?

[georgi.zhekov]

Hey,

Can you send us a reference on what you're trying to do?

Thanks!

[hunter_williams]

Flares from an aircraft:

https://youtu.be/GWuSRxdP384?t=6

[georgi.zhekov]

Hmm you can either make some small emitter object (like a sphere for example) and animate them along a curve. Then add the emitter to a Phoenix source and emit temperature and smoke. Just make sure that you scene scale is in check in order to get proper fluid motion.

The other way would be to use nParticles instead of the geometry object for the emission with the same method from above.

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Also, depending on the number of flares, you might make one simulator for each flare and parent it under the emitter so they move together. After you have simulated several variations, you could instance the simulators to get more for rendering. This way you won't be simulating the empty space between the flares.

[hunter_williams]

I was starting off with a missile setup that Svetlin was nice enough to provide me earlier this year. I will take a look at an emitter object like Georgi suggested.

[hunter_williams]

Hey guys. Coming back to this flare thing.


Is there any specific reason why I should not parent my fluid simulator to the animated flare as opposed to having a large grid space to sim?

[zdravko_pavlov1]

Hey,
No there is no reason why you shouldn't parent your simulator to a moving object. Just make sure that you have Motion Inertia ON. https://docs.chaos.com/display/PHX4MAYA/Dynamics (it is on by default).

Simulating several small emitters that are far apart, in a single simulator will result in a lot of not utilized (empty) voxels between the flares. The benefit is that the trails may interact with each other if they cross. The downside is that the empty voxels are still going to be calculated and that will result in a longer simulation times and larger cache files. It will also take a lot more RAM.

That being said please note that thin trails like these in the reference video, most likely will also produce a long simulators with a lot of voxels that need to be calculated. Maybe not as much as if you are using a single grid, but still it is not a bad idea to consider using some sort of hybrid approach. You can emit particles in a trail behind the flare and use Phoenix's particle shader to render them as Points or Mist.

Here is a video that I recorded a while ago showing that method. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIAtWLa2uYY
There was a question here in the forums about contrails left behind an aircraft. The video is recorded in MAX unfortunately, but the principle should apply to MAYA as well.

Cheers

[hunter_williams]

I'm not using particles this time. It's just a sphere that has a keyframe animation to simulate the flare dropping.

But that good to know that as long as I have Motion Inertia on I can parent.