just something made for fun…
anyone knows a good realistic technic/plugin for a convincing smoke?
noam
http://secondreality.ch/tutorials/effects/smoke/smoke.html
The only things that i really see wrong are comming from the modeling and placment.
On the inside edge of the ashtray its very sharp, even manifactuered edges arent that sharp.
Also, the burnning on the cig. itself is almost circular, i think roughing that up would help.
Also, the closeup image, the cig on the left, looks to mechanical, i dont think one could bends such as that. And it looks as though its being balanced, maybe put it against the ashtray like the other one inside of it.
http://www.allanmckay.com/tut/pflow\_cigarettesmoke.avi
best look cigarette smoke i have seen to date.
Awesome render too, the burnt end could use a little less displacement tho…its just seems too much.
Damn :shock: I’m trying to QUIT ! 
Nice render!
Not cigarette smoke, but maybe worth to take a look at it:
http://www.computerarts.co.uk/tutorials/default.asp?pagetypeid=2&articleid=17697&subsectionid=847&subsubsectionid=763
It’s with max volumetrics, I don’t think it works with vray, but If I remember correctly there is a free plugin for volumetrics that works with vray, can’t remember its name though, anyone else does?
flipside
ScatterVL is what your after 
But that isn’t available for Max 6 yet, is it?
Cheers,
Metin
thanks anyone for the comments and the tutorial links. loved them.
noam
btw…your pictures are very nice and realistic
The paper is excellent. Care to share your technique?
--Jon
well, nothing too exotic, i’m affraid. the lighter was modeled in SketchUp, the rest in max.
the twisted budds are densly meshed cylinders with bones, to give them the twist.
the ash itself is a scattered little squere.
the chrome of the lighter is a vray material with almost 100% reflectivity.
the burnt edge of the ciggies was done like so: the final vertices of the cylinder were noised on one axis, and the last part of the paper was displaced using a map of a stucco wall with some large blurry spots added in photoshop. other spots image was used as an opacity map (the burnt paper has holes in it, as you might notice).
the cigarette paper displacement map:
the cigarette filter part is a blend material of a simple white one and a golden one with glossy reflections, and the blend map is a scanned LM simbol from the package.
the filter part blend map:
the cigarette paper diffuse map was done in photoshop, including the stripes and the burnt edge.
the cigarette paper diffuse map:
the nicotine stain on the end of the budd was scanned, from a real budd (!) pretty disgusting, i know…
the nicotine stain (can’t believed i scanned this thing…):
as for rendering - HDRI for reflections, one spot with area shadows, pretty low GI settings, caustics and DOF.
hope you find it usefull…
noam
Amazing!
OK, a non rendering related question! Does that ashtray exist in real life?
If so, who makes it?
It reminds me a lot of the iittala ballo candle (except yours has also the
groove to hold the cig and an offset bowl)
Here’s a pic
http://www.relax-living.com/mainpage/iittala/ballo/all-400285.jpg
(Also, thanks for the writeup, I had been grappling with how to do a
realistic ash pile for a while. I was using displacement map w/ water
level on a plane, and it just wasn’t working too well)
Escher
Hey noam_farhi
I need to do something similar to this but, I have to animate a cigarette
getting lit :?
I would just like to know witch uvw mapping u used.
My cylinder tends to get sucked in ,in the centre of the cylinder, I cant get the shape to collapse properly.
I have looked everywhere and it is as if this has never been done, I cant find any tutorial reference to do this :?:
Thanx if anyone can help me with this
hi Eaton
i just used a regular cylindrical UVW map, i’m affraid i didn’t understand what went wrong with that for you. if you want to send me your scene, perhaps i could understand it better.
try me at noam_farhi@yahoo.com