How to create an Aurora Borealis?

[Buzzoff]

I would say a rippling "curtain" with a transparency falloff towards the bottom with moving noise. That should at least get you started.

[Scarabrae]

Perhaps the Nubula tutorial on Alexander Shareef's site may help?

http://www.ap3d.com/betterspace/

[igu4n4]

I had to do this for a General Motors job last year. I went about it by creating 2 different particle emitters one blue, one green in sprite mode. I then moved them in the same direction, then opposite, then back again over the time of the animation, to simulate the undulation of the light effects, with heavy motion blur.

I then took them into Afterfx, composited a couple of layers of the same animation together to get the right translucency depth and did some colour tweaking. Finally I used trapcode's Shine filter to an alpha of the effect to give it some streaming rays throughout the undulation.

I'll see if I can dig up the aurora effect tonight and post it.

Steve.

[Nomad]

igu4n4 - thanks for the info, yes if you can show the animation that would be great to see :)

Scarabrae - thx, it`s a start and maybe a way to explore

Buzzoff - thank you, yes it`s prbably the easiest way to start and see what comes from it.


I`ll post my animation tests as soon as I have them ready. Thanks again.

[lillmagnus]

I did this once using a long segmented box with a moving fractal noise texture and a transparencymap. Then i used bones or morphs (can't really remember) to move the box object in a waving way.

This will not work for a top down aurora, then i would use particles and colorgradients.

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.