FumeFX

#761

Sorry dude – I’ll be in NY all next week :smiley: Not gonna be on the computer much while I’m there. Actually – I gotta leave in about 10 minutes. Talk to ya when I get back!

#762

Hey guys,
This thread is pretty insperational. I have not gotten all the way through (working backwards) and its full of wonderful FX.

A friend of mine is working with FumeFX and I was lucky enough to try it out - great stuff!
I’m going to try and get my company to sign off on getting a license!

I’m wondering though, a lot of the FFX stuff I see is very directional. ie: always lifting or moving in a given direction.
Is there enough control to have it ‘sit’ where the effect happens? Fire -> Smoke -> disipation - all in the same sphere shape? This is the closest I have seen, but then the lift takes it up. Any directions would be great as well, I get to play with it again in a few days!
I ask because, working in games, my animated sprites are pretty self contained. I’m thinking I need to get an explosion to go through the expansion -> burn -> disipation all in the same square render frame. It cant have too much motion and should take up the whole frame in order to be usable. I can accomplish motion with the in-game particle system.

Everything I was able to accomplish, in the time I had, had no ‘end’ in the system life… it just burns forever. (edit: I watched the car explosion tutorial and that showed the keyframing)

I apologise if some of these questions are basic… but I didn’t have more then a few hours to play with it.

LassJus - Your stuff blows me away! Keep it up!

Thanks!

#763

WOW! Merry Christmas and a happy new year then! Gonna text you!

ansi

#764

The reason why max forces seem to affect particle flow differently might be that pflows Force operators DEFAULT influence is 1000% and not 100%. So pflow is affected by ten times the normal force.

#765

Hey Guys…First off…Wishing Everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year…

Now I have a very simple(coughdumbcough)question:) …when I render my Fume in Targa Sequence and when I open them in After Effect…I select premultiply in alpha…but somehow my Fume look and feel changes and it looks bland…but when I say Ignore and dont import the alpha in…it looks fine…any guesses why?

Reagards,
Entrancea

#766

’

Try increasing the smoke opacity, or just duplicate your smoke layer in after effects.

#767

Thanks, that’s not it…

Build a scene with a pflow (with the force op at 100%) and a simple source fume, both emitter same size/location, one wind, both use the same wind, run the sim, the pflow particles travel faster then the fluid.

It’s just the way it is.

Rif enlightned me to the use of a low-res velocities channel in the viewports. It’s the obvisously the best judgement for spacewarp behaviour (looks alot like forceviewer).

We were just hoping for a judgement based approach, by that, you already know how spacewarp settings behave with pflow, was just hoping to get same/similar results with Fume.

#768

On default settings, Fume pretends you’re working in a normal environment on Earth, and as such, smoke and fire due rise due to heat. But the key fume setting that controls that is the Buoyancy paramater. Drop that to below about .05 and you’ll have a seemingly ‘gravity-less’ simulation. That’s what I use to create Zero-G Explosions for a space battle i’m working on. The key then is to make it look right cause it’ll probably look a little funky.

The key setting to get your explosion/fire ‘ending’ is the Fuel setting in the FFX source you’re using. So long as there’s fuel to burn, it will burn. Animate that to 0 and the burn rate will take care of any remaining fuel. Your smoke will also eventually need to dissapate if you want it to so that you go from nothing and end with nothing and have a nice explosion or fire in the middle.

Good luck.

#769

No dude…I tried that but its crapping out…Is there any other sequence which I could render!!..In which format do you guys usually render?

Regards,
Entrancea

#770

Any news about Allan McKays FumeFX DVD yet??

/Stefan

#771

I guess the good old 'squid ain’t so turbo these days :smiley:

#772

not anyones fault at TS neither allan´s.
the dvd is finished and will contain lots of max files for max 8&9 as far as i know of.
allan is working on dvd 2 already. its going to be a hattrick.

#773

Just kiddin’, mate! Not for a moment do I doubt that ‘hattrick’ will be great! :thumbsup:

#774

Are you sure it doesn’t have to do with the render engine you are using?

As for sequences, tga, rla, openexr, sometimes png.

#775

Thanks so much, I was able to get some good results - I will put all the TGA’s together and post them sometime soon.

-Caalro

#776

Hey dude,

         Well am using default scanline for my renders but so far with everything else the tga works fine but when it comes to fume something goes haywire....Aargghh:banghead: ...

I am attaching a pic for you to see what I am getting in After Effect…

Thanks and Reagards and wishing you all a very Happy and prosperous New Year,
Entrancea

#777

Hey Guys,
There is something I have been wanting to do but dont know how to?Not sure if I have come across this topic either.I was wondering that in reallife when fire burns,then the objects behind the fire are seen to be waving in air…cant remember the term exactly but I think its called Haze or something…Like when fire burns the background appears wavy and fluid like…I hope you can understand what I mean to say…So anyone knows how to create that in 3D?

Regards,
Entrancea

#778

You’ll find a lot, if you search with ‘heat shimmer’, ‘heat distortion’ or whatever. It’s a very easy effect. You make a smokey PFlow, render grayscale, bring into comp, and use as a displacement map. I think all compositing packages have a displacement tool, though their names may vary. If you are using FFX - you can just blur and add noise to your fire in comp, then use that as a displacement for the background. If you need more detail - you can use the pflow fumefx follow operator.

#779

Allright…Cool…Thanks a lot dude…

Reagrds,
Entrancea

#780

Really wierd looking. hard to tell with the black background on the image you posted. Is there a background object in max, that the alpha sees, but isn’t visible to the camera? Seems like your alpha is somehow corrupt.

What are your tga settings? Best results I get with nothing ticked (or split alpha only) + 32-bit. Premultiplied alphas are a little wierd when imported,you’ll have a halo of your backgroung color from max, then you have to set AE to Pre-mult and match your max background on import, dunno extra steps to do.