Afterburn

My company just purchased Afterburn 4.0b. I was not aware that it was not compatible with Mental Ray and global illumination. I am concidering returning it for that reason, because I am comfortable with that render and like the results I get. I am not sure if I can convince my company to buy Fume FX instead (because it is twice the price), but I like the results of that from what I have seen much better. I also ran across Pyrocluster, which is compatible with Mental and GI. My question is should I get Pyrocluster instead, shoot for Fume FX, keep AB, or go another route completely.

does anybody use GI with Afterburn??
Usually you do not render afterburn with the geo together. you will not be able to get the same stuff with afterburn as with fume…and vice versa.

for the GI. you should read about tricks how to get GI like renders with it. If you really want GI with it, Final Render an I think Vray too can do it. but it won’t be fast.

We should be getting VRAY should. If VRAY works with AB, maybe I will keep it. Do you know if the particles from AB can be set to emit light themselves, and add to the GI?

well, particles are particles. AB is the shape you add to them.

GI has two different effects. one is emitting light. the other is blocking and bouncing light.

I’m not sure if any renderer can emit Light from AB (I never tried it). but as AB are spheres(basically) you can add spherical shapes to particles, add a self illuminated material to them, and make them not visible to camera.

Blocking or bouncing light is not nescessary actually. all you need is a domelight that will cast shadows. then you will get soft shadows from the AB shapes which will fake a global illumination.

only thing you do not get is colorbleeding…but I’m sure there’s a way to fake that with compositing too

finalRender can emit GI from fumeFX renders, good chances it will work with AB as well. It also have particle light type in order to emit light from particle systems. Not sure about Vray.

Afterburn 4.0 emits GI in finalRender and Vray

I’ve used GI in a film shot maybe once so far, it does look nice but for the render times it really needs to be justified. However depending on what you’re doing it can really turn out nice sometimes
FFX is the same deal, sometimes for fire in tight environments it can really help a shot by having its light splash onto walls and the floor etc. But again render times go right up as soon as you do this so it’s more a call you make on very specific shots

Hey Allan is your site coming up today?

its up in some shape or form, it’s going to be developing over the next few weeks - but loads of cool new content. I’m putting up some new stuff later today, the good thing is its now on a new server, lightning fast, lets see if you guys can try and make this site run out of traffic as well

What types of lights are best to use with Vray and AB together. I have just started experimenting with these two programs. So far, direct lights are working well, and VRaySun is taking forever. It would be nice to have the VraySky and Sun system illuminating the AB clouds, if possible. Anyone have any suggestions?

I’m not sur VRay can illuminate AB shader… Same thing for FumeFX. Anyway VRay Shadow did not work correctly with AB. AB can cast shadows on a object, but an object cannot cast shadow on AB shader with VRAY Shadows…

Yeh, I wouldn’t use the sun system at all. That doesn’t make too much sense. Stick with shadow mapped. I think if you use vray shadows, it casts shadows fine but doesn’t receive shadows from GEO.

Hi, I’m having some problem getting the Afterburn shadow map to appear on my matte material. Below is what i get when i use matte material on my ground. Apply Atmosphere is on and at object depth.

This is a render with standard material apply to the ground.

If I use shadow map or raytrace shadows with atmosphere shadow turn on, I can capture the shadows on the matte material. Is this a bug with AB Shadow Map?

Oddly enough it works fine with fume, but I get the same artifacting (or lack thereof) with afterburn, looks like a bug, report it to Sitni Sati.

I’ve searched through this thread a couple times, seems like some of you claim vray and AB work together just fine, but I’ve never had any luck with it. I seem to lose all sense of light direction with it, no matter which type of shadows I pick and with/without Atmospheric shadows on. Any ideas?

Scale of the scene might have something to do with it too, but I’ve just had no luck at all. I got it to look ‘right’ in one very small AB example scene that i switched the light to Shadow map, but bringing in the AB preset into another scene, no luck.

Any ideas guys?

It also seems to just work and not work from time to time, switching between the two scenes, AB shadow map will work with Scanline and vray and then not at all for the next.

I’m working with a scene that requires some afterburn love. I’ve gotten the shapes pretty close to what I want but now as I do my test renders for final quality, I’m finding really bad stepping/banding in the particles. see attached.

my view step size is at .001 so I can’t go any lower there, are there any other settings to be aware of for fine tuning this issue?

Nothing’s attached…

sorry, not sure why that didn’t work the first time. look closely at the edges there and you’ll see the stepping. thanks for any input.

Edit: I think I’ve been able to resolve it by bringing up the jitter, a lot.

How do you pull a z-depth pass of the Afterburn?

You can do a red/green gradient based on camera distance - in the AB shading params.