Fluids : emit from object artifacts

#1

Hi everyone !
After hours looking for an answer on the internet and in maya itself, i come here to ask for help :smiley:

I’d like to emit smoke from this basemesh, to create a cartoon-like cloud.

The problem is, of course, those terrible “stairs” when you emit fluid from an object (increasing the resolution up to 300 doesn’t change anything, the stairs are still there, but ultra small )

(this is reso 150)

Is there any way to get rid of it maybe ? I have tried emit particle from the cloud, then emit fluid from the particles, but it’s exactly similar, artifacts are still here…

And by the way, how could i emit smoke from the object “all around” it ? when i set gravity to 0 it just stops moving (I’m used to Fumefx in 3dsMax, when you set gravity to 0 the smoke emits “everywhere” )

thanks for helping, i am totally stuck !

Cheers :slight_smile:

#2

Does anyone has any idea please ? I’m still stuck on this :slight_smile: thank you !

(and sorry for the double post, how can i delete the previous one ? )

#3

Not really that I know of at least not on the first frame but you can do what destruct007 suggests (http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=204855)

But considering these are clouds, you just need to put some Swirl in there and sim for a few frames so it breaks up the stepping. Also add some Diffusion to soften it a little along with very little Pressure to push it a little bit out. Of course turn up the Quality and Shading Quality and Render Interpolator to smooth.

#4

thank you HowardM,

I will try this.

but how do you emit the smoke “everywhere”, I mean make the smoke grow all around the mesh, and not let it rise ?
That’s my “main” problem in fact, i even tried the volume axis but it’s not really working properly.

#5

Hey Saephire,
Maybe this could help you .
http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/script/emfxclouds-cloud-generator

hope it helps,
Cheers

#6

Hi Ramade, thank you, already seen this.

Awesome tool but it’s not appropriate for my work unfortunately…

It is still not working, so still looking for a solution ! :slight_smile: any help would be very appreciated!

#7

Maya fluids are voxels. they are layed out in a cubic grid.

Basically it looks like you are dumping alot of density straight from the mesh into the voxels at the points where the mesh is. Hence you are getting stepped solid voxels.

What I would do is make sure you are filling the volume rather than just using the mesh to make a hollow shell of voxels. Dont use so much density. Then as others have mentioned you should use dissipation or diffusion to get a softer edge. I usually chuck a bit of swirl in there too.

Make sure you are also using texture opacity to add a bit more fluffies (can be tricky to get nice)

Its going to be hard to get a solid cartoony shape but make it cloud like, its kind of a contradiction…and not really so much what maya fluids are geared towards…but its doable…

#8

What is not working? What are you trying to exactly do? I dont understand what you mean by “everywhere”?

In you image, there is smoke all around the mesh.

Did you try what I said? If you want to break it up you need to sim a few frames of it, moving and expanding, with swirl, diffusion, and pressure.

#9

Cyberone : thx for your answer. I’ll try to fill the entire object, i avoided that before because it is much longer haha.
About the density it didn’t seem to be that much, the density scale is 0.500, and density/voxel/sec is 1.000 ?.. It did not seem that much to me, but i may be wrong ^^

For the texture, unfortunately i cannot use it because of my work pipeline. Sadly :frowning:

HowardM : in fact, i cannot make the smoke emit continously all around the cloud. If i set gravity to zero, its starts to emit, then stop. If gravity is at negative values, it comes down, if the value is positive, it rises.

I hope this picture explains it better than me, haha.

I tried as you said, but, what I try to achieve is tricky : i need the sim to break the stairs, so emit for several frames, but i need the cloud to keep as possible the mesh shape … I know it looks kinda impossible… ^^’

#10

I mean fluid texture. Its a setting on the actual fluid. Unless you are exporting raw voxel data to render in an external renderer you should be able to use it.

Oh and another note…never scale the fluid by its transform unless you know what you are doing…

In terms of the making it move without gravity.

dissipation
diffusion
turbulance
swirl

To be honest I think the best advice would be for you to read the maya docs on fluids and play with each setting to get an understanding of how stuff can work for you.

#11

Haha, actually we do, unfortunately !

Thx for helping. I’ve read everything i could in the Maya fluids docs and it didn’t helped me for this…

Well, i’ll try to figure it out alone then, sorry to bother ^^

thank you !

#12

And if you would like to fill the volume you can actually turn on fill Object in emitter attributes section or if you are on an older version, you can fill the object with nParticles and emit from that nParticle too.

cheerz
de Heavy

#13

Thank you, i’ve tried it already, and it’s very slow haha :slight_smile: