Hi folks!
In the process of making a sequence with animation, camera movement and fluids stuff happening. The wip is viewable at my vimeo and all my vids there involves this project. interested in any feedback and tips on how to make the explosion look cooler (as in sexy).
Thanks!
Hi there,
The first thing I would do is to separate explosion from trail (explosion in separate container) then you can add much more detail to it. If you using maya 2011 you can use auto resize which helps reduce simulation times.
Most of good looking explosions have more than one effect (e.g. sparks, smoke, fire, smoke trails, debris, embers…). Some of it you can render separately and composite later.
If you have chance try FumeFX (3ds max only).
Thanks for your reply Wirginia! I would love to try fumefx but can’t get max to run on my computer for some reason=( The auto resize fuction is nice but no matter how low i push my treshhold, I always get some kind of squareness to the fluid, its like it’s graduallly “packing” itself with each frame.
I could also separate the explosion from the fire/smoketrail but will the two fluids mix good? So far my fluids dont “blend” at all when i have a container within another container. They just kind of layer on top of each other
One more question as I have you on the hook=)!; Do you know why fluids look washed out in mental ray per default?
That’s true fluids will not mix (they will not interact physically) if you have them in separate containers, although they should render like intersecting volumes. Many times it’s not most important though. You might want to render them separately anyway, and comp explosion on top of trail. I know - now you can see each voxel, but if you add all other elements (debris, smoke trail, sparks etc.) add glow and hot spot in post you might get away with it. And this gives you so much more control over each aspect of shot.
There might be few reasons why fluids look washed out in mental ray:
if you using mental ray physical sun and sky (all your scene would look washed out) then have a look your gamma correction and exposure settings, try this: http://mayastation.typepad.com/maya-station/2009/05/colors-are-washed-out-with-mental-ray-sunsky.html
did you tried to render it out with maya renderer? Does it look any better? If not, you might like have a look at this: http://agentfx.blogspot.com/2009/12/fluid-rendering-handwaresoftware-mix.html
Don’t forget also - if you rendering with mental ray use light with ray traced shadows on, fluid self shadow on (adjust shadow opacity), and segments shadows in mental ray render settings. You might need to switch Auto Volume on too (although I never use it).
Working with fluid texture might help too, this is very good tutorial about fluid transparency: http://vimeo.com/5425464
Wow, thank you s much!=) So far I havent been very successful in getting responses on fluids so getting this much info from a professional is really exciting. Good link, I thought i had checked out most of David Shonevelds stuff but had missed the one with hardware/software. Do you have a vimeo yourself by the way? would be cool to see your stuff=)
I’m just learning a lot of this stuff myself now.
My day to day work is in games (Disney - Black Rock Studio - Split Second - VFX). But I really enjoy developing and rendering higher quality VFX.
I’m compiling my reel now - still big chunk of it is games (especially Split Second). That is my latest addition: http://vimeo.com/21346341
I was planning to post more stuff, but as you, I don’t feel very successful in getting any response…
That looks awesome! How many containers is that, and what resolutions and fields? or is it curves?
I’m studying to become an animator/vfx-artist for the games industry myself, and we’re off to practice at real game studios this year, so Im compiling my showreel too and it mostly consist of animation from the games we have developed the last two years but i also love hi-quality VFX-stuff. Never knew fluids would be SO hard. Still fun though=)
Yeah, it’s kind of surprising how small the fluids community seems to be. I posted on creativecrash some time ago and the last post before mine was made like 2 months earlier. Almost kind of lonesome sometimes since most of my classmates only are interested in modeling.
Do you have a suggestion how I best make 2 containers out of the one i have now? 2 different scenes or duplicating the one i have and exclude the trail from the explosion-fields?
I used curve axis volume field with nparticles, and then instanced static fluid container to particles using particle instancer.
To separate explosion from trail I would duplicate existing container, adjust size and resolution and exclude trail, I think…
I thought about taking part in CG challenge here, but I don’t like to animate robots ;o) This is place where you can get more feedback I guess.
I just mentioned the same thing in Wirginia’s tornado thread, but thought i’d mention it here as well, that the Maya Dynamics forum has a more active fluids community than this one, if you’re looking for crits. It’s a bit awkward as dynamics FX doesn’t really have a dedicated forum. I’ve found the Maya Dynamics one to have a lot of knowledgeable, helpful folk.
I hardly ever visit the animation forum, but probably will more now, after seeing these kinds of posts.
Wow that’s a great looking explosion. If you don’t mind me asking what resolution is your container and how do you get those little details in the explosion? I find that even at high resolutions I can’t get small detain without textures but textures don’t look very good with videos only stills. Thanks.
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