Making steam with blender smoke simulations.

#1

Hello everybody,

I’m kind of new to blender but a 3D veteran. I’m trying to achieve a simulation with the smoke fluid solver from blender to make steam coming out from a shoe. I’ve followed the tutorials I could find online, so the overall basics of the simulation are up and running.

The problems I’m hitting right now is that the fluid is difficult to manipulate, and I always get that sort of dark smoke look, I tryed reducing the density, and also augmenting the heat and the particle emitter speed, I got closer but it’s hard to get to the result I want.

Can anyone give me a clue please ?

Thank you,

A.

#2

Tried decreasing the ammount of particles and boosting up the alpha value making it moore transparrent?

-thondal-

#3

Thanks for the help, finally I kind of got to where I wanted, reducing the particle count a lot, putting the heat to 5, reducing density wich made them more transparent.

Now I’m modeling the object from where the smoke will go out (collisions), I guess it will take some time to simulate.

Then rendering the smoke alone and then comping the hole thing with the shoot.

Will post updates as we go on in the process.

Thanks,

A.

#4

I got the smoke simulation to what I wanted…

Now I was trying to get to render it with HDRI lighting… but I found only very confusing things about it.

Some posts say that you cannot render HDRI lighting inside blender own renderer and that you must use yafaray (wich I’m unable to make work properly actually with blender 2.5 alpha2). Others say that you must texture the world object, and activate two settings… wich is quite frankly not working.

Wich is the best way to render smoke with HDRI lighting ? and also output it as a multipass render so I can comp it later on ?

(Having smoke on a different layer, also diffuse, etc…)

Thanks,

A.

#5

Here’s a good way to do it …

Render a particle system with “gobs and gobs of billowing smoke,” in complete isolation. (Basically it is just an alpha-texture or single gray scale.) The smoke should be coming from a point-source at the bottom of the frame.

Now … composite it. Lay several copies of the smoke on top of itself, offset slightly in time, and with different alpha and color settings; maybe slightly different speeds. Position the image in the Y-axis as needed to establish where the smoke seems to be originating from.

To cause the smoke to “emerge from the smokestack,” simply create a mask and attach it to the top of the stack, masking off all but the opening of the stack. Above the stack, put a gradient leading out in both directions that tapers off to opacity. Composite through this mask. If necessary, arrange the mask as a “billboard” that always faces the camera.

Presto … instantly tailorable smoke, which you can also use in other settings.

You’re probably going to need a lot of smoke, especially if you’re doing stuff that’s supposed to be coal- or wood-fired (as I do). Therefore you need a cheap and reliable way to generate convincing smoke in a hurry. This will work. (Exactly the same footage and method can also produce steam.)

#6

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