I was trying something new and I couldn’t find how to render the fire like it shows in MaYa in the viewport.
I have a dome light with a HDRI images and a vRay sun light and nothing change.
As you can see in the viewport looks like should be.
In the render looks way to flat.
I already try to change the light situation in the PFD simulation under:
PFD Simulator
Rendering > Fire Lights
I have also GI active in the rendering settings.
But nothing helps me to have the awesome result that I see in the viewport.
It would be very helpful if you screenshot and post your fire and smoke render settings.
The GPU preview in the viewport acts like all the lights you have connected in the preview lights set are directional, pointed towards the origin of the grid. If you have no lights in the preview lights set, a default directional light will be created.
Also, it’s important to note that if you are not in Viewport 2, the GPU preview in Maya would not be quite accurate.
You may need to play around with the fire and smoke shader. It took me a while to get the fire look right. Also if you want to reduce the render time, try to lower your max sample like 4 or 5. I turn off GI in Vray render setiing. GI doesn’t really affect much on the fire overall. You can try to turn on and off to see the differences.
1. Set the adaptive grid to be based on Smoke (Grid --> Adaptive grid --> Smoke) and set a low threshold.
2. Set the adaptive grid to be based on Temperature (Grid --> Adaptive grid --> Temeperature) and set a low temperature value (depends on the lowest temperature of the simulation). Note that 300 is equivalent to a room temperature.
For the sim with fire and smoke together I usually set adaptive grid to smoke and set the value to 0.001 . Also from your screenshot I see you are using progressive. I recommend you use bucket and set your Max sub div to 5 and threshold to 0.010 for fast rendering. I actually use this setting for production as well. Really fast and still keep enough the detail. Let me know if you have something better. Hope that will help
Thank you for your fast support.
I already install the latest nightly builds and is perfect working.
You guys are rock!
Hi thhvfx!
Awesome. Let me try tomorrow and I will post a couple of screenshots.
I recommend you use bucket and set your Max sub div to 5 and threshold to 0.010 for fast rendering
Yes I do also that, but I wanted to go high and standard so I can see how long takes the maximum to have a nice result.
I was testing / Im testing also render time.
But is great to point on that so I can remember to bring back to those values.
BTW
I tried also this:
adaptive grid to smoke and set the value to 0.001
But somehow didnt work.
I will try again tomorrow. I did many changes that I dont remember all the changes I did.
I tried also the settings from George and didnt work for me.
Maybe I forgot something.
For the fire sim in my personal opinion it all come down to your resolution of the sim and your Phoenixfd shader. Increase the rendering subdiv to 24 or even 100 will not make your fire look better much.
I already tried that and please correct me if I’m wrong. I tested with many setting and I find that’s the best so far between balancing the quality and render time.
Let say if you are happy with the shader you can try to change the Self shadowing(Rendering rollout >> Fire Light>>Self shadowing) from Grid based to Ray traced to get even more realistic result but this will increase the render time and I think this is what you want to play with; not the Subdiv from Vray render setting.
Adjust Light Power on Scene to control how much you want the fire light affect to the environment around the fire
Adjust Light Power on Self to control how much light spreading on the fire and smoke itself. Works great when you want the fire affect to the smoke.
For the “adaptive grid to smoke and set the value to 0.001” not working. Make sure your boundary is open in X Y Z. Adaptive grid to Smoke and Preallocate Memory to When Adaptive. Please make sure your source emitting the smoke.
Again this is all my personal experience when I work with Phoenixfd.
Hi thhvfx!
I did a test and your right!
with a subD of 5 is almost the same result in less render time.
WOW! Well this increase the time drastically.
Using the Ray traced for the Self shadowing this increase the render time and change the looking for the fire. Looks much more realistic, but for fast and no macro-close up animation - I think this will be too much.
In case I need it - now I know where to add a touch of details
Thank you for that one too.
For the adactive grid/smoke and with a value of 0.001 until now doesnt work at all.
My all 3 XYZ grids are open.
I tried all the settings possible even the tip from George Barzinski Expand and Don’t Shrink and for me didnt work.
The simulation will never expand.
Got the scene! So the adaptive grid by smoke does not work because you don’t have Smoke simulated at all - you have set both the fire and opacity to be based on the temperature channel. You can enable the Smoke channel from the Output rollout and check if it’s in the simulated caches from the Simulation rollout’s Cache File Content list. Basically, if you want to use a channel, you have to make sure it’s simulated first
If you choose to adapt by temperature, you can set the threshold as low as about 301 - not that 300 (in Kelvins) is the default temperature in the Phoenix simulator, so if you go below that, the grid will start expanding infinitely.
Some more notes on your older posts - the GPU preview is a very simplified version of the real rendering so it does not support many advanced rendering algorithms, like GI. Also, it does not support Self Illumination of the smoke by the fire, so it would look as if you went into the Fire Lights rollout and unchecked Emit Light. Actually self illumination for the GPU preview was supported, but it’s slow and you can just render it to get the final result
A note on the emitter sphere separating from the simulation - if you are seeing this while the simulation is running, this is normal - the last simulated frame has not finished yet, but the scene geometry has advanced so the simulation can read the new state of the scene. Once the simulation stops, you’ll be able to see the alignment of the objects with respect to the simulation correctly.
