Hello Everyone,
I’m working on a mid-flight scene of a Ariane 5 rocket atm. My goal is to get more comfortable with volumetrics in Blender.
My vision for the final scene is to catch the moment of the flight where the vehicle hits the speed of maximum dynamic pressure.
Image Updated Aug. 10
Note: The engine-trail is way brighter in reality. Atm. I just try to find a solution for the rocket trail.
Thank you for your interest.
Greetings from Hamburg,
Fast
Awesome choice of scene to try this feature!
need to add some clouds in background
but beginning to looks very nice
how did u do the trails smoke
any tut you followed or thread ?
happy cl
not necessarily as the rocket probably has surpassed the level of clouds
Good job, following this
Hello Guys!
First of all thanks for the fast first feedback. I made a lot of progress in the last couple of hours.
I started weathering the main-fuel-tank and added more decals to the hull. Additionally I started to figure out how to visualize the displaced Air around the SRB’s and first tile set.
As you can see I made a huge leap regarding to the rocket trail.
I’m currently using volume-scattered objects to display the trail and displaced air. From my point of view it’s 100 times more efficient compared to complex smoke simulations. I want to produce a still image. So there is no need for smoke simulations.
With volume scattered objects it’s very easy to control the appearance of the “smoke”. I just have to figure some things out to make it pop for the final render.
I will not add clouds to the scene, because you rarely see any if you are trying to follow a rocket with a camera. The rocket is too fast and high.
I will add a light gradient to the background though.
Atm. I’m trying to figure out where to place the displaced air from the SRB’s. Additionally there are some other parts on the craft that most likely will displace air while reaching maximum dynamic pressure.
Stay tuned for more.
That’s it for today though 
Greetings from Hamburg,
Fast
you can use particles and smoke/fire Sim together,
you can also use forces on the particles,
Looks very nice. I think you have the right approach regarding the rocket trails. Possibly I would lighten the dark areas of the core tank, the Ariane 5 has some variations in colour but I think what you have looks a little too dark (especially when considering it would be washed out a fair bit by atmospheric scattering at that sort of distance) and tone down the ‘brick tiles’ texture (i know it has them in reality, they just seem a bit too noticeable here - the contrast is less IRL). A touch more gloss on the white paint would probably help to make it pop a bit more too.
Look forward to seeing the finished result!
A quick look at other launches suggests that there should be more illumination from the exhaust plume below. Are you using black body for emission colour? The reflected light tends towards yellow.
BTW your rocket looks amazing, there doesn’t seem to be any online images in flight only at takeoff.
+1 about tiles.
Hi everyone!,
I added some further details to the rocket and changed the textures for the main fuel-tank. The tiling is a little bit more subtile now. I’m getting there.
The image is also toned a bit to match the natural colorization of the craft while looking at it from a far distance.
I also corrected the flow of the exhaust a little bit. I’m currently considering to enhance the actual burn-size of the SRB’s and change the view a bit.
The second Image in this post is the setup for the exhaust of the SRB’s and Center-Stage. I think I know hot to tackle the displaced air around the SRB’s now. Maybe I can show it to you in the next update. It depends if my strategy works out or not.
The setup for the trail is basically just a cone with three displacement modifiers.
I had to reduce the image size and crank up the samples to get some reasonable render times for tweaking the setup in the compositor.
My final Image will be rendered with 2500x6000px and 200 samples, But the trail takes ages to render. So I will work with placeholder renders in compositing for a while.
If I didn’t know it was CGI, I’d think it was real… great work!
