Render clouds like Cotton Ball

[lichtmaschine]

Hello,

is there a way to render Phoenix FD smoke that it looks like a solid object? I like to achieve something like this :



A Cotton Ball which reacts naturally to light etc.

Is this possible?

Best regards
Ingo

[Ivaylo Katev]

interesting task. there is a way to render like solid object, bit it's not what you need.
well, perhaps you can advect with the velocity of a static frame some particle cloud and accumulate the result, to form strings of particles. when you have the final stringized particle cloud, you can render it with the point shader

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Hey,

I've had similar results by just adding vector or advection displacement to the regular atmospheric render mode. I guess you should experiment with displacement and the smoke color render options.

Cheers!

EDIT: Heh, double reply, now you have more options to choose from

[lichtmaschine]

Hi,

thanks for the tips. Svetlin, do you have a demo scene? Any kind of displacement I tried doesn`t work for me.

Best regards
Ingo

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Hmm, are you using the official 2.2, or a nightly? I'm sorry to be redirecting you to the help files, but check those: http://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/P...g-Displacement.

Basically, with gradient and surface driven displacement, you need to make sure your smoke channel is selected as a Surface, and you need to set the proper value for the surface level. You can check if your surface is correct by enabling 'show mesh' in the preview panel. The more interesting displacements are the vector and advection types - for them, the surface is not needed, but your texture must be in the proper format - a color texture in vector mode, or a color with a negative and positive values in advection mode.

[lichtmaschine]

Hi,

I´m using the official 2.2 with Vray 3.20.03. But I can`t see the advection option in the displacement type dropdown list? Using the smoke channel in implicid surface mode.

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Ah, then drop a mail to the support team and ask for nightly access - the advection displacement was not in the official Phoenix yet. I'd say you should also try atmospheric mode - but a solid isosurface with a proper scattering material might do the job too...