pflow fire, how to control flame color

[JohnnyRandom]

A couple of things come to mind...

1. Particle Age Map - color based on particles age. Can be a bugger to get it the way you want.
2. Age Test(s) - to different events with different materials. Nice variation easily controllable.
3. Spherical deflector(s) - color based on whether a particle is within the volume of a specified deflector. IE collision test send the particle to a new event with a different colors. Look very uniform.

+ a few more that require plugins...
Box#3 within a volume, age, distance from, speed, ect.
Krakatoa same as above

[wannabeArtist]

Thanks,

I've been only using the age map so far. I will try to control the materials by events next.

[scrimski]

I've been only using the age map so far. I will try to control the materials by events next.You need to define an age wether for the whole Pflow or for each event.

[wannabeArtist]

Hi,

I just found Allan McKay's old tutorial (http://vfxsolution.com/allanmckay/2009/11/legacy-fx-tutorials/) on fire.

I tried to apply that to my scene and made another pflow emitter. The shape of the fire looks a lot better, but I wasn't able to translate his material setup mental ray, so I continued messing with the material I had before.

Here's the result - my original attempt on the left and the one based on the tutorial on the right. I don't get why my particles don't "fade away" even though I've tried all sorts of tricks with the transparency.

Also, I would still like to be able to control the Kelvin temperature by particle age, since there is an input in the material for it. The trouble is the allowed inputs are controllers (such as bezier float), which of I have no experience how to setup.

[scrimski]

Here's the result - my original attempt on the left and the one based on the tutorial on the right. I don't get why my particles don't "fade away" even though I've tried all sorts of tricks with the transparency.You need a particle age map for the cutout.
You don't need refraction, but a diffuse color.

[wannabeArtist]

Thanks,

I'm not sure if I understood that correctly. Here's another screenshot of the material and the resulting render.

[scrimski]

Any reason for the A&D material? Just asking because I personally would use a standard material for that with a colored particle Age map for Diffuse and SI and a Particle age map for the opacity.

What's the difference between the left and the right renderer?

[wannabeArtist]

The left fire is my own experiment and the right one is based on Allan's tutorial.


Reasons for a&d,

I'm not very used to standard materials - I just jumped to Max from XSI in the beginning of this year and arch & design (a.k.a mia_material) is easier for me. I also use it for everything else in my scene as well as the photographic exposure control and render, of course, with mental ray.

Exposure control is part of the problem - if I don't use self-illumination and rather plug the particle age map to the diffuse map (as in Allan's tutorial) it looks great without exposure control (screen shot) but is almost invisible with it.

I suppose I could render the scene without the fire first and then only the fire and merge them in post, but I was curious if I could do with mental ray's materials - plus, with a&d the self-illumination affects FG as well - I'm not sure if it does so with standard material.

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