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DizzyJ
10-09-2006, 02:21 PM
I'm working on an animation with a firepit. The flames aren't seen, so I don't need to use particles or any other solution for the flames themself, but I'd like the light from the firepit to flicker a bit. My set up uses four different lights. In terms of a reasonable trade-off between render times and appearance, would it be best to rotate the lights a bit, change their intensity or both to create flicker? Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of time to expirament, as I plan on rendering while I'm on vacation and leave in 2 days (and still have far too many frames to animate).

Any suggestions would be wonderful.

(I haven't tried animating the intensity of the flame lights, but assume I can key it in Maya. If not, perhaps there is another solution I should examine.)
joconnell
10-09-2006, 10:07 PM
Do something like put in a point / omni light that uses an orange colour and and extremely high multiplier - you can use inverse square decay so that the light keeps really intense in a small space but falls off so it doesnt flood the room with light - max has a noise controller that randomly jitters between a set min and max range that does nice flicker, likewise if you use a soft noise on the position of the light it'll give you a nice feeling of the fire churning away as the shadow direction will be changing around.
CaptainObvious
10-10-2006, 08:58 PM
The frames should render at the same exact speed regardless of whether you move them around or change their intensities. The thing that takes time with lights is tracing shadow rays, and you'll need to trace the same amount of shadow rays each frame regardless of where the lights are positioned or how high their intensities are.
DizzyJ
10-10-2006, 09:18 PM
Thanks for the replies. I'll try to set up a noise-based intensity solution, along with some motion to the lights tonight. Oy! So much to do before I leave for vacation (and have my computer churn away for days).
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