I was wondering what’s the best approach to create the steam seen in this clip:
I was thinking about using the cigarette smoke preset as a starting point, but somehow this video looks like it’s actually not simulating sucking the steam away, but rather faking it by stretching and bending the final simulation. I know that for now Phoenix doesn’t allow smoke simulations to be deformed by geometric deformers (which would make this effect pretty easy, I guess), so that’s off the table.
Regarding the sim, for now my main problem is getting the smoke to stream into the vent (neither BodyForce nor PathFollow manage to cleanly pull the smoke into the shape I want). I think that the PHXTurbulence is basically fighting against the BodyForce/PathFollow.
Any ideas?
Yup, sounds possible that the turbulence may disrupt the other forces - you can use the force preview to determine if that is the case.
You should also try using a source with negative volume inject - this should be more realistic as well 
Hi everyone, I came across this old post, and it’s exactly the effect I’m trying to achieve: steam being sucked into a hood. How can I achieve this? I’ve been using Phoenix for a short time. I’m experimenting with Path Follow and Body Parts, but the smoke just disperses across the hood’s surface, not being pulled in. Can anyone help me? Thanks!
I think I would try using some noisy, possibly animated, geometry to create the shaped volume of the steam, to keep the particles within the general shape, with a path follow to guide.
I would suggest using Tyflow’s Zenith solver for this, simply down to its usability and realtime feedback.
This is a very quick test using Tyflow. I’ve only played with Inferno a little, so go tweak some parameters and you should be able to determine whether it’ll work for you. Plus there’s the Facebook page you can post questions to for guidance.
I’ve never used Tyflow… is it compatible with Vantage?
In a way yes, but only as Phoenix also is. You’d be better off adding this smoke as a part of post work in any case.
There is a free version of Tyflow which you can use, so it’s certainly worth experimenting, no?
