fine tuning maya fluid fire, need help


#1

Hi everyone, first post on this forum, hopefully I’m posting in the right section.

Anyway, I’m working on a fluid fire effect, object emission, and I’m having a problem where some areas of my sphere don’t seem to be producing enough particles. In more recent versions, I have upped the resolution of the fluid container as well as the emission geometry, and I’m finding that when I up the resolution, though the flames look much better, it’s starting to thin out in areas where I don’t want it to.
In a nutshell, I’m working on a flame effect for a character whose head is always on fire. The directors want to completely cover up her hair, which I’ve achieved by adding a semi-transparent After Effects solid beneath the low-res particle effect, but once I raise the resolution the solid isn’t doing the job anymore because the emission is too thin. I don’t want to change the look of the flame itself, I just want it to be more visible around the emission object.
Can anyone please help me out?
I’ve included snapshots of the low and high res flames (red arrows pointing to problem areas), as well as those same frames with the AE solid (red circles) included.


#2

Your images didn’t come through -but my first thought is to boost or multiply in AE.

If that still doesn’t work but you really like the status quo so far do a new sim and render an additional fire layer that fills in the gaps and comp it all together in AE. Very typical work flow for complex FX.


#3

The emission off meshes is in intersecting voxels by default, so increasing the resolution will lower the region of emission. However you can enable “useDistance” on the fluid emitter (type = surface) and then set the maxDistance to the desired value. It also helps to adjust fluidDropoff and you might need to play with the rate. This can also result in less aliasing in the emission.