trying fpr solar flares

[paulselhi]

well i am sort of there, here is a vid of wip, a bit big at 1Mb sorry, flare (http://www.wanbridge.net/stuff/flare.avi)

ok the textures are very basic, i will work on this, but the main problem is the particle movement, they seem to flock to a spline point, hang around for a bit then all wander off to the next point. The effect is interesting ( good for ghosty things) but not smooth enough for what i am after

If anyone can pull this scene apart and tell me how to get a better effect i would be grateful

flare scene (http://www.wanbridge.net/stuff/flare.c4d)

Once i have this right i can add some of these to a sphere with particles from points to create the sun

[JoelOtron]

Not bad!

Perhaps try to set up an effector rig with wind, trbulence and deflectors instead of a spline. Theres a cool cohesion effect project file that might help you using standard particles:

http://www.lizardlounge.com/Pages/C4D/tutorials/particle/index.html

Also, putting your particle emitter in a bend deformer group (or more than one deformer) could help.


if you want to try Thinking Particles (assuming your R8) try Srek's site:

http://www.bonkers.de/

He is nice enough to have several great TP setups available.

And when in doubt---you will always learb something at Jeremy Weichel's site:

http://www.jeremyw.com/C4D_Stuff/C4D_Links.html

Good luck

[paulselhi]

i tried this version using TP with gravity, it is a lot smoother and with the right prro mats may yet work, but that lizard lounge smoke effect looks very interesting

www.wanbridge.net/stuff/tpflare.avi

[MJV]

Post movies that can be viewed in QT5 or earilier and you'll get more viewers.

[JDex]

Download QT6... I mean it's been out for a year...

[JoelOtron]

Looks good!

[MJV]

Originally posted by JDex
Download QT6... I mean it's been out for a year...

Yes, but to keep the pro status, I'd have to pay $30 more, so that would be a waste. I know lots of professionals who for one reason or the other don't have QT6. Yes, I have QT6 on my main workstation, but don't assume that everyone uses their main machine for web browsing. In my experience, the best animators always post movies in QT at least one version earlier than the latest. This means that 99% of all possible viewers will be able to view the movie without incident. It's the newbies who usually post using the very latest, most uncommon codec or format.

[JDex]

Hmmm... well as far as losing the pro status, that is strange, because I have owned Pro since 5 and my 6 just accepted the code and now I have Pro 6. As far as the codec, release version... I think that is sensible for about 6 months, but at some point it comes down to what performance are you sacrificing to allow people who don't keep their systems "kind-of" up-to-date.

[LucentDreams]

Originally posted by MJV
Yes, but to keep the pro status, I'd have to pay $30 more, so that would be a waste. I know lots of professionals who for one reason or the other don't have QT6. Yes, I have QT6 on my main workstation, but don't assume that everyone uses their main machine for web browsing. In my experience, the best animators always post movies in QT at least one version earlier than the latest. This means that 99% of all possible viewers will be able to view the movie without incident. It's the newbies who usually post using the very latest, most uncommon codec or format.

seems to me sorenson 3 is still the standard for overall compatibility, that and/or mpeg 1, but most people nowadays provide divX versions which you haven't gotten either am I right.

[JoelOtron]

I am on a mac and use Sorenson 3 to post movies, but I can view Divx 5 avi's (but no other avis)

[paulselhi]

Can QT compete with divx for compression/quality ? i think not

[paulselhi]

ok before i add the flares i wanted to get the sun ready, this proved harder than i expected as i use TP to emit from the sphere. This led to blotchy explosion type fireballs that would suddenly appear. When we make fire balls normally we get a smooth flow of fire from the particles but using an emit from object gives discret particle effects and though the fire progresses ok it's birth is very stuttered

So to get around this, without adding too many particles which would swamp the effect i set a key on particle birth to start at -100 and stop at 0, then gave the particles very low speed. It removes the blotchy explosion birth but i have not quite got the speed/lifetime/size balance right yet

any way here is a QT of the progress :

www.wanbridge.net/stuff/sun2.mov

here is a smaller divx

www.wanbridge.nat/stuff/sun.avi

rendered in just over an hour ( TP particle effects render so much faster than normal ) i used no antialias to get a speedy result

Here is the scene file if anyone feels generous and want's to give me some suggestions as to how to improve it. specifically to get more life in the flames without have so many that the sun is swamped

www.wanbridge.net/stuff/sun.c4d

[JoelOtron]

That looks great!

Can I ask what this is for?

[paulselhi]

just tinkering

[paulselhi]

well i have made some progress with the sun and learnt a few things on the way, thanks to the SAS :thumbsup:

Yes Her Majesty's Special Air Squadron, i was watching a documentary of them with my son, and there they were in the desrt, sun beating down..sun hmmmmm. One of their main skills is being furtive, unnoticed...hmmm transparent

Then we heared about the ill fated bravo patrol...hmm,, bravo, alpha...ALPHA :eek:

So it came to me, prevously i had changed from a surface emiiter to a volume emitter thinking that the birth of flares beneath the surface would stop the explosions, but no when they come through the surface the effect is still there, but my older version( see last vid ) which had the particles stop being born at frame 0 did not allow for much tweeking

So into the pyrocluster shader, alone with no backup and running low on ammo, and there it was, or there they were, 2 options

1. Add another tab to the left hand side of the alpha color gradient in global settings ( when they are born) to make them transparent

2. Adjust the radius size from within age effects to make them grow with time

These effects are seperate from the TP configurations and do the trick though i will have to render again to see if both are needed

I also realised that i do not need to add a sphere shape to emit, just use the standered tp particles and pyrocluster creates the spheres

But these flares are too good and sort of negate my need to create a seperate flare system, all i need to know is how to selective emit from areas and how to adjust the emissions so that some of them are super blasts flares

Once again a big thankyou to all the lads in Hereford :applause:

Here is the QT

www.wanbridge.net/stuff/sun3.mov

[smoke]

Looks great :applause:
The close up looks kinda bubbly, but still quite good.
SAS to the rescue again, atta boy chaps

[JoelOtron]

That is really very impressive work there!

:thumbsup:

Really looks like gasses bursting from beneath the surface. And you've nailed the granulated looking surface of the sun well.

Would you mind sharing the file? :)

I imagine this being an on screen display as might be seen on the bridge ioo the Enterprise in Star trek. You might want to try having your image go out of focus and out of phase as you zoom. Just needs the digital zoom in grapics laid on top of it.

You may want to try rendering out a pass of just the flares and use it as a layer in After Effects to try a heat haze refraction effect for kicks.

Have you seen the BBC Documentary with Sam Neill calld Space? (its titled Hyperspace here in the states). Its out on DVD and has loads of great cgi effects depicting astronomy phenomena. The shaking/out of focus camera adds a lot of realism to the animations in that broadcast.

[paulselhi]

here is the file

www.wanbridge.net/stuff/sun2.c4d


there may well be a lot of redundant tweaks here, as i should really have changed one thing then rendered to see the effect but i get carried away with my tweaking

the pyro enviroment is set to a high world step size of 30 for quick rendering

i unfortunately missed most of the Space docs but will keep an eye out for re runs

i have after effects but have never really tried it out, i got it when i was playing with maya due to the hardware rendering in maya needing to be composited but i have moved away from maya as apart from the excellent fluids the program, especially the textures and the h/w rendering is a real effort to get anything done

C4d is so much more productive, if only i could master TP and SLA, what ever progs i try ( and at the moment i am a great fan of lightwave) i always come back to c4d

camera panning is something i must work on, the out of focus idea sounds interesting

please play with the file and see what you come up with

[mt_sabao]

Hi all!

Paul, nice work you got there! You SHOULD check this link (http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/LATEST/current_eit_304.mpg) , its a composite of extreme ultra violet images captured by SOHO (its the ESA solar observatory). That shoud give you one hell of a help on your work. Also check their main site, with lots of pics (almost real time) in other wavelenghts where you can see diferent faces of the sun.

Cheers, and keep up the good work!

[paulselhi]

Thanks, i already checked out that site but the images were not quite what my imagination was working on, it was a diappontment to see that the real sun looked nothing liked the fiery ball i had imagined but i am sure that when i was younger i remember seeing film of a fiery surface

I suppose it is a question of scale, the majority of the flames ( flares) should be scaled right down with only a few larger arcing flares

I can't see how to do this with the TP set up that i have, i mean how to get a range of particle effects across the one volume with the one emitter, i am sure there must be a way to select which points a pont emitter emits from, if you get my point ( err say that 5 times in a row after 5 beers in a row )

i think i will have to add a seperste particle system for each larger flare, probabbly only 3 or three (if that) so a simple emiiter with wind and gravity should do the trick

At the end of the day it is all illusion and if the effect can be achieved with simple arrangements then it should be done that way rather than have to use the power of TP and xpresso

[mt_sabao]

Hi Paul,
As you might know, the "face" of the sun depends on the wavelenght in witch you observe. In visible light (how we see the sun (http://www.russellc.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Sky/sun%20311001%20sm.jpg) ) its surface is very calm and, yeah, dull. But in other colos the sun can exhibit very extreme and violent behaviours! (http://www.clorofila.ipp.pt/sabao/sun.jpg)
This to say that, i at least, never get disapointted when i see one of this images!

As to what you are trying to make, have you tried PMaterwaves? That new node that came with 8.1? You can use it to, using an image mapping the surface of the sun, define areas of more intense emission of particles. You can with an image (or several) control speed, intensity etc of your particles, and so, simulate the areas of "flares" (they are not actually flares, but proeminences).

Hope this helps

[paulselhi]

yes i have 8.1 but really am useless with TP in general any suggestions as how ro do something like this with pmaterwaves ?

i have looked at the tut on maxon site and can see how neat PMW is but i don't really have a clue as how to implement it in this situation

[flingster]

wow...ya keep knocking em out bud...like the result...no idea how you get what you want either...but thanks for sharing your efforts.
:beer:

[randyrives]

Looks good, I think you have done a good job capturing a believable sun.

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