(XRay Stylized) Fluid Smoke

[YourDaftPunk]

You need to play with the opacity ramp in the fluid shading options. Normally the dense core of the fluid has high opacity while the edges have low opacity. I would reverse that and create a sharp fall-off on the left of the graph to create the edge boundary. There may be lighting and compositing tricks you can use as well.

[Fess]

Shawn,

Thanks for responding...

I usually do that reverse with opacity ramp when constructing fire. But I was hoping for something different.

Really don't want my smoke to look like I used Maya's "Fluids".
Some more examples:

http://footage.shutterstock.com/video.html?id=347521
http://footage.shutterstock.com/video.html?id=339748
http://footage.shutterstock.com/video.html?id=347518

Tweaking the hell out of it in NUKE is the only way apparently.

-J

[Remi]

If you're not locked into using fluids, I would suggest After FX and Trapcode form.

[anevsky]

Good topic.

would be great to see some of your progress on this.

[Cheesestraws]

You could try using cloth or soft body dynamics on a mesh running through a turbulence field with a typical facing ratio shader on it.

[Aikiman]

As already mentioned playing with opacity ramp and blowing the whites on the color ramp.

http://www.vimeo.com/3912682

[cgbeige]

I did a lot of research on this because I had to do it for a print contract and I ended up avoiding Maya and just Photoshopping/compositing it. Aikiman's results are closest to wispy smoke but it's just not there (sorry man!) - it's feels like glass.

I tried particles, high-res voxels and even booted windows to try FumeFX but nothing worked. I even saw Houdini people try it with no good results. The only thing I saw that came close was this (scroll down):

http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~batty/ (http://www.cs.ubc.ca/%7Ebatty/)

unfortunately, that was developed for a film and never published as software (edit: looks like it was incorporated into Krakatoa - see below).

[cgbeige]

looking around, I also found this:

http://www.franticfilms.com/software/support/krakatoa/work_in_progress_gallery.php

this seems like something that's really lacking for Maya. Someone smart should make a standalone Realflow-like app for all platforms that had plug-ins for Maya, C4D, etc. Qt is your friend

[Aikiman]

I did a lot of research on this because I had to do it for a print contract and I ended up avoiding Maya and just Photoshopping/compositing it. Aikiman's results are closest to wispy smoke but it's just not there (sorry man!) - it's feels like glass.

I tried particles, high-res voxels and even booted windows to try FumeFX but nothing worked. I even saw Houdini people try it with no good results. The only thing I saw that came close was this (scroll down):

http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~batty/ (http://www.cs.ubc.ca/%7Ebatty/)

unfortunately, that was developed for a film and never published as software (edit: looks like it was incorporated into Krakatoa - see below).

Its all good I could probably eek out a better example if i tried but I dont think I could get too much better. Looking at all this development material you've included here is interesting. Looks as though a few guys out there are playing with the same technology makes me wonder why it takes so long for it to come through to Maya. Max and XSI seem to get all the goodies first :(

[Fess]

Guys,

Thanks for responding,

will post some progress on my smoke soon.

@Dave
I'm seriously preoccupied with your post.
Man, those sims are just so beautiful...(especially the hand/dust).

I WANT THIS POWER!!!

Damn..
-J

[Cheesestraws]

Generating points at rendertime and splitting the particle render into passes are good ways of rendering large numbers of particles from Maya. Hosuk Chang a webpage here (http://www.hosok2.com/) that shows both methods and he goes into depth on how to achieve them. I had started to write my own implementation of particle slicing but lost it due to a harddrive crash, since then he has added a new method that uses camera clipping and seems to be easier to implement.

[cgbeige]

actually, I think the hand/dust was a rip-off tech demo showing that they are capable of doing what Houdini does (it was used for the Sandman shots in Spiderman 3).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAsvddGbTC8

Great software but over my head

[Cheesestraws]

This (http://msalek.com/main/node/1) demo reel shows the advantages of procedurally generated particles at rendertime, almost every shot uses them in some way. He used to have shots from the Spiderman movie sandman parts on his website but looks like he has taken the links down. From what I can tell the technique of taking slices of particles and procedurally generating them is similar to what Krakatoa is doing, just Krakatoa does it behind the scenes.

Really the software you do your particles in is inconsequential, generating them procedurally at rendertime is down to the renderer you use. It is not that hard to get a Renderman renderer to generate lots of particles from your base ones.

[Aikiman]

This (http://msalek.com/main/node/1) demo reel shows the advantages of procedurally generated particles at rendertime, almost every shot uses them in some way. He used to have shots from the Spiderman movie sandman parts on his website but looks like he has taken the links down. From what I can tell the technique of taking slices of particles and procedurally generating them is similar to what Krakatoa is doing, just Krakatoa does it behind the scenes.

Really the software you do your particles in is inconsequential, generating them procedurally at rendertime is down to the renderer you use. It is not that hard to get a Renderman renderer to generate lots of particles from your base ones.

Any known info if Krakatoa will port to Mac?

[kdronez]

Damn I rly wanna see 10milion particle sim in real I mean the PC to be infront of me xD.Awesomeeeeee!!!

[Cheesestraws]

Any known info if Krakatoa will port to Mac?

Unlikely to ever happen, Frantic are a Max studio so are Windows based. It used to be standalone but they moved to integrate it more into Max, there was talk of a possible chance of it becoming standalone again but it doesn't look likely.

Damn I rly wanna see 10milion particle sim in real I mean the PC to be infront of me xD.Awesomeeeeee!!!

For most uses I do not see the point in simulating that many particles, generating them at rendertime is so much more efficient.

[Fess]

John,

I've been spending some time reading http://www.hosok2.com/ articles on the data expansion.
Finding myself lost trying to understanding his workflow.

He's using renderman and some C to accomplish the particle genetration it seems. You state that this is "not so hard" to do?

Have you been successful doing this?

If this is the level I have to be to get a job as a vfx artist, I'm in trouble.

-Fess

[Fess]

Hi,

I've had some time to really sit down and experiment with the fluids and flow.

Pleased with the direction is going, here is some progress:

http://www.mohan-conceptual.com/smoke_progress01.jpg


-J

[Aikiman]

Textures add a nice touch, just got to work on creating a nice gentle swirling sim to get the extra detail.

[Fess]

Hey everyone,

I'm stumbling with recreating a stylized hyper-realistic smoke.

The ring NURBS distorted with a softbody Lattice. shader simple samplerInfo into a ramp.

Motion is displacment using oceanshader, the darn thing just does not look correct:

animation: http://www.mohan-conceptual.com/POC_ring.mov

http://www.mohan-conceptual.com/for_cgtalk.jpg


I tried the painting voxel method but it just falls apart quickly, opted for the NURBS.

Studying rings, I see the smoke actually rolls around itself with occational wisps extending outward.

slow (scale: small):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOrvg8o1ZUs

fast (scale: large):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMLop6MIwUU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPAoWflgO1w

any input on this?
-J

[Aikiman]

Hi Fess,

Are you are emitting fluids from the nurbs?

[Fess]

Yeah Jeremy,

I am.

Maybe I should keep the NURBS stationary, parent it to the container and transfrom the container through another container? This way it will hold form.

I'll test..

-J

[Aikiman]

Before you do that, try doubling your density scale for a start, your smoke is nice and transparent but the smoke ring examples you showed are quite opaque around the ring. I would also have a very high dissipation so you dont end up with these long trails of smoke behind it. At the moment it looks like it is underwater, nice effect if thats what you are after BTW, but I would kill that off. Also a smoke ring starts off quite round first, then breaks into a mess. I would use some sort of deformation multiplier so yours does the same, ie little to no deformation in the beginning then deforming alot towards the end.


If you want to use particles as well (and you may not want to), you could overlay in comp a set of goaled particles that rotate around the nurbs in U or V to give a sense of the smoke rolling around itself and even emit from the nurbs for subtle smoke trails with turbulence to help with the effect. (or not) :)

Apart from that, good stuff!

[Fess]

Jeremy,

Sounds good as usual, especially the particles traveling around the NURBS UV.

will continiue working on it.

Sent you email regarding something else.

Thanks
-J

[Fess]

Jeremy,

The sprite popping thread was relative to a smoke ring. I thought the ring looked to texturish...

Had sprites being born on the ring randomly in the U and traveling around the V (based on lifespan).

Goal weight (using a ramp) hits zero after the sprites make one full journey around the ring and then releases at the inner point (this emulates the smoke behavior of a ring traveling not fast/not too slow).

I working on making something else happen that will give me a look more like my stylized smoke (from this: http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=86&t=744195 )

animation Hardware render:
http://www.mohan-conceptual.com/ring_progress.mov

http://www.mohan-conceptual.com/ring_progress.jpg



I'll keep u posted on my progress ;o)

-J

[ovspianist]

i think it would be better if you use a fluid to drive your particles...

[Aikiman]

Jeremy,

The sprite popping thread was relative to a smoke ring. I thought the ring looked to texturish...

Had sprites being born on the ring randomly in the U and traveling around the V (based on lifespan).

Goal weight (using a ramp) hits zero after the sprites make one full journey around the ring and then releases at the inner point (this emulates the smoke behavior of a ring traveling not fast/not too slow).

I working on making something else happen that will give me a look more like my stylized smoke (from this: http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=86&t=744195 )

animation Hardware render:
http://www.mohan-conceptual.com/ring_progress.mov

http://www.mohan-conceptual.com/ring_progress.jpg



I'll keep u posted on my progress ;o)

-J

Bro that is looking fantastic! Is that fluid shaded particles or are you emitting fluids from the particles? Looks like you got some motion blur in there too?!

[Fess]

i think it would be better if you use a fluid to drive your particles...

@ Chuang:
Thanks for the suggestion, I find I get the control using fields rather that the container. Container is great for the eddys etc. if my ring was moving slow.



Bro that is looking fantastic! Is that fluid shaded particles or are you emitting fluids from the particles? Looks like you got some motion blur in there too?!

ha, thanks man. I think this ring is good for a close up if I blur the texture on the ring more (simply by moving the ring). The ring was rendered stationary and the actual sprites are moving so I got motion blur as they left the ring.

The sprites have a assigned lambert with a rendered sequence (100 frames) of my initial "stylized" fluid.

Its not congruent with the current look I want.

currently testing:

-Changed sprites to spheres and have the torus emit the spheres while flying through a fluid container.........while using the script where the "fluidVoxelInfo" node finds the vector for the particle's location and then emits density. Hopefully it give what I want.

-J

[noizFACTORY]

Hey, the sim is looking quite good! Are you going to get the particles to swirl around as they leave the torus using fluids?

[Fess]

Hey Sachin,

Yes, I'm doing some test sims with fluids right now. The sprites are not going to be a solution in this particular situation....

will post progress soon.

-Fess

[Kinematics]

Hey Mohan,

Ive tried doing this before but since I wasn't too good with particles I tried using Ncloth. Unfortunately I couldn't get very close to what you showed but here are afew of the results from my test.

http://www.media-design.us/187/fluid_test_04.jpg
http://www.media-design.us/187/fluid_test_05.jpg

It is just a simple ncloth and some shader trials. I tried sampler info and as a still it could look some what like the images you showed us previously but when its animated. You can really tell it aint smoke sadly.

Just thought i'd share my results

[Fess]

Hello Tan,

That's looking petty good as a overall stylized effect.
Fields effect nCloth nicely, so motion can be controlled.

I would also use a compositing program to push contrast and have multiple blue toned layers with varying opacity to get a wispy look.

-J

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