particle cloud rendering in maya 4.5

[playmesumch00ns]

Originally posted by Octagon
hi there,
in the hopes that some of you still render stuff with maya here goes my question:

im doing the kind of classic train smoke right now but lighted very stylized, cartoony. lots of yellow and blueish colors

when rendering software cloud particles how does light actually travel through my particles?

if have the problem that I cannot selectively light finer parts of my particles as the light seems to unrealisticly spread throughout all my cloud without beeing swallowed by density or being affected at all by light umbra or decay settings.

by the way, raytracing cloud particles in maya with the maya renderer isnt at all related to raymarching but rather a fake, right?

cheers,
matthias

yup, no raymarching in maya. I think there's a raymarcher on highend mebbe?

[Fex]

if found this raymarcher plugin

http://www.lightengine3d.com/index2.html

[Octagon]

Originally posted by Fex
if found this raymarcher plugin

http://www.lightengine3d.com/index2.html


thx for your input!
a friend of mine here used that specific plug to render volumes defined by geometry but I didnt think of applying it to my particles. shame on me ;)

another fellow student told me its possible to assign the fluid shader in 4.5 to particles, too. not only fluidShapes are supported.
Has anyone tried this?

i dont have time on my hands to do those kinds of expermints right now but since the fluid shader _is_ a raymarcher that could be the way to do better shading on cloud particles with better integration and speed (I hope) than with the raymarcher plug-in.

Any further input?

cheers,
matthias

[Kabab]

From my understanding you can use fluids as a texture for anything..

But why not do the entire thing with fluids ?? i think you could have a much better result and if you make the fluids static and use a texture they will render/calculate pretty quick.

[Octagon]

Originally posted by Kabab
From my understanding you can use fluids as a texture for anything..

But why not do the entire thing with fluids ?? i think you could have a much better result and if you make the fluids static and use a texture they will render/calculate pretty quick.


I thought about doing all the work with fluids but chose particles because
a) i'm more familiar with how to set them up
b) some of the shots show bigger areas of smoke like a 10x5 meter square, which i didnt want to simulate for performance reasons (would need to use 3dsolving for that)
c) fluids seem to look "all the same" from what i've seen until now.
d) iterations, iterations, interations. i rather work with a faster particles simulation an spend more time on optimizing particle animation and shading tweaks and lighting

the idea of using only the texture from the fluids package could've been the way to go. but i've already completed some of the shots (5 out of 10, small hd resolution 1920x720) and wouldnt want to chose my particles\shader setup now (for continuity and time reasons).

i'll try to post some animation when thing get a litter quieter here. btw, do i have to find some webspace for uploading or can i upload them directly to cgtalk?

cheers,
matthias

[Octagon]

Originally posted by Kabab
From my understanding you can use fluids as a texture for anything..

But why not do the entire thing with fluids ?? i think you could have a much better result and if you make the fluids static and use a texture they will render/calculate pretty quick.

btw, i dont see how i could've used fluids with a _static_ grid for doing animated smoke. do you mean by faking the motion using placements?
i'm doing this in part but try to get most motion though particles.

also as i said in my other reply a grid wouldnt do, im afaid. i'd have to use 3dvoxels for some shots and they take ages to simulate and render.

cheers,
matthias

[Kabab]

Originally posted by Octagon
btw, i dont see how i could've used fluids with a _static_ grid for doing animated smoke. do you mean by faking the motion using placements?
i'm doing this in part but try to get most motion though particles.

also as i said in my other reply a grid wouldnt do, im afaid. i'd have to use 3dvoxels for some shots and they take ages to simulate and render.

cheers,
matthias
Well if you have seen the fluids video from AW Duncan showed a thing where the grid was static and made a trail of smoke and used fractal textures to give it a puffy look. It looked very very good.

Correct me if i am wrong.

[Octagon]

Originally posted by Kabab
Well if you have seen the fluids video from AW Duncan showed a thing where the grid was static and made a trail of smoke and used fractal textures to give it a puffy look. It looked very very good.
Correct me if i am wrong.

Thx Kabab! I saw the fluids video but must've overlooked that section (will check again). I hope there's some raymarched images on the tape, too :) After all that's the reason why you would chose to render using fluids right since you could also use the animated textures approach on particles?

matthias

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