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View Full Version : best technique for smoke along a path?

cgbeige
03-05-2009, 10:50 PM
I'm a print guy and use dynamics for some things but particles are my weakest point. I just got a contract to do some retouching with smoke following a path and now I am looking into the techniques. I'm looking to save myself a headache and see if someone can point me in the right direction to a tutorial for something like this. I have two main concerns: If the smoke is attracted, it needs to wisp off at the edges realistically so it can't just be glued to the nurbs curve. My second issue is that this is going to be high res and 2D (non-volumetric) smoke is probably going to look really crappy. Is this type of thing brutally difficult with 3D voxels?
Duncan
03-06-2009, 12:14 AM
If you have Maya2009 then you could use the new volume curve field to control the flow. Otherwise you might look at effects:CreateCurveFlow.

Renderwise you can raytrace with self shadowing on cloud particles for moderately dense smoke. For really thick smoke in 2009 use the thick cloud nParticle style and raytrace in MR with raytrace shadows on the lights.

If you don't have 2009 you could still apply a fluid shader to the cloud sw particles, but you would need to raytrace in Maya Sw(there is a big thread on this forum for rendering thick clouds that covers this setup). Also this doesn't do the shadowing between particles only within a particles. Again for only moderately thick steam just raytracing the regular particle shader with self shadowing might be better.

Another option is fluids, although it might be tricky if your flow is long and skinny.

Duncan
cgbeige
03-06-2009, 12:37 AM
great - that helps a lot. I have Maya 2009.

thanks
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