Hey everyone… Im kind of stuck with the delema. I have to do a lava surface that flows along the street… and well it has to look good. So i’ve researched a lot and did alot of tests and I can do a pritty good still frame render, but when things come down to animation it all goes to waste. Reasons are the shader doesnt work with the surfaces and so on…I’m wondering if perhaps any of you know any good tutorials or anything about making animated lava.
Here is what I got on the still
I dont think that looks all that bad. there is or used to be a lava material tutorial on allan mckays website aways back.
yeah but the problem is this shader is hard to work with…but thanks i’ll check em out
Two other possible solutions…
Search for Magmalicious at www.scriptspot.com
www.rebelthink.com has a magma shader that looks like a photo and has fully animateable parameters.
--Jon
magmalicious shader doesnt work with animation, well it does its a bitch tho…
i’ll check out the other site…looks promising
you can send an email to the rebelthink people for a 30 day demo
da_elf - im already on it 
thanks
I would try a non-particle route. Maybe try an animated mesh using FFD’s or morph targets…might solve the mapping issues.
I found this cool looking shader for you- not sure if it helps. 
jujubee thanks…look is not the issue here, its the motion. I got now 3 shaders which all produce decent lava but they all have same issue and that is motion of fluid surfaces does not drag the lava texture with it, because its a 3d texture it stays in place and need to be animated in xyz direction and matched to the speed of fluid. But even then if you have a curvature of fluids where flow is having an S shape then this approch goes to waste.
Dellis is right the non particle approach would be next thing Im going to try.
Hi there,
never done lava myself.. but maybe a reactor softbody (high friction values/stiffness 0.01/avoid self interrsection on)
that rolls/flows slowly over a sloping surface could help you aniamting the motion of the lava mesh.
like he said its not the animation of the mesh he is worried about right now. right now he needs a shader that will animate with the current animated mesh he has. when a flow moves the shader needs to move with it. actually. here is an interesting approach. why not try to create an animated displacement map that displaces a grid under the ground surface so that it bulges up over the surface. you might get the right look of the lava moving. then you can use your texture also altered to have moving black and white areas going with the flow. this can be used as a mask for the red and black lava areas.. hey. anythings worth a try i guess.
sorry.. didn´t read carefully enough.
but you can stick procedurals to an object .
Add an UVW modifier to your object, set it to “XYZ to UVW”
Switch your procedural map coordinates to “explicit map channel” .
Now the procedural should move like expected with the mesh and it´s deformations but still looks like they are in object or world space.
Maybe that helps
cheers
samuel i’ll try that rightnow
thanks
for some reason xyz to uvw didnt work. I found howerver a texturemapping option in glu3d mesh, but that did a shit ass mapping and its useless…but the texture does stick. So im trying something else now…hopegully this will work
here is what I got sofar
http://www3.telus.net/public/vinnik88/moblur\_tests/lava\_test\_.mov
if you use a vertex color map somewhere in your shader to blend or mask the lava (however you are doing it) then as the vertices move, they’ll take the masking or blending (or whatever it is in) with them
that simulation is looking pretty good - one recommendation though, you may want to increase the adhesion of the fluid (however that is conrolled) because you’re getting areas where the lava swells/extends out, then retreats back to its original form - but then again, thats a fluid issue, not a texture issue
Dynedain - Im not too familiar with the way vertex color mapping works…
Vertex color mapping allows you to “paint” colors onto an object independent of its materials. The color of any particular vertex is stored with that vertex’ data, just like its coordinates, which other vertices it connects to, etc.
One of your map types in Max is “vertex color map” which basically lets you load that channel of information into a map slot so you can use it like a falloff, gradient, or any other kind of map.
I dont remember how off the top of my head, but check out the max help files to see how to assign the vertex colors.
In this case, it can be pretty usefull in order to “flag” vertices so that a certain paramater in your material always stays with a vertex.