Cycles fake fire

Artwork Blender Tests
1

I am trying to create a node setup for fake fire using cycles.
So far the icospheres are clearly obvious and most tests have been complete failures.

the last few tests showed better results when using a more synchronized fade out rather than the stragglers shown near the end of this video.

Does anyone know a better way of faking fire or explosions other than 2D images and icospheres?

Second explosion uses three different emitters compared to the first one that only used two.

2

That was amazing!

3

Wow it works so well ! What’s your setup ? Are these particles ?

4

Thanks, I used icospheres with three different particle emitters to get the flow effect.

blender 2013-09-29 19-11-17-75.png1920×1018 373 KB


After that, I used this node setup to get the fire to fade out.
blender 2013-09-29 19-09-56-63.png1920×1018 236 KB


I am still working on it since it greatly slows down render the time. But its 100% GPU compatible :smiley:

5

Oh wow that was amazing! Quite convincing so far, good job!

6

I think the key is not fading but controlling the size of the particles and their lifespan. When you want the fire to die, make the particles smaller and have a shorter lifespan.

7

“Dusty lenses” effect forces me instantly to clean my glasses :smiley:

8

Woah, very nice result. this kind of ‘ballsy’ fire/explosion is actually better than volumetrics for some styles, like Team Fortress -like cartoony stuff etc.

9

Thanks for the replies.

I’ll try adjusting the particles to make them more believable.
I’ll also update on my progress and include another test on how it might be used.

In addition, two quick questions:

How do I change the size of a particle when it is about to disappear? Is changing the particle size with the age of the particle easy?

10

Nice effect. I also like your dirty camera lens effect - how did you do that?

11

For the dirty camera effect I used this node setup

blender 2013-10-01 13-10-42-19.png1920×1018 396 KB


For the bottom node, use a bokeh blur or image to create the lens image. The nodes will then use the render colors to make the lens take the same color as the scene or bright light source.

12

This is amazing! I didn’t know about the particle info node. Thanks!

It’d be cool if you could post your blend to blendswap. I’m sure a lot of people could use this.

13

Can you distort the sphere shape as it rises? Perhaps through a global texture? From memory this fails as the particle objects are duplis and don’t respect the particles location (taking the origin of the source object instead) :frowning:

This was my dreadful attempt with particle spheres for smoke effect http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QG5oU5mre0

14

I’m still learning new things about the particle system everyday, I didn’t know you could change the size of the particles when they age. I will have to try that out tonight.

Also, the animation looks good, how did you get the sizes to change?

15

Hmmm, I don’t recall but the responses in at the YT page say I scaled the object with a texture. Probably a ramp blend type.

16

Thanks I’ll try it out.

PS: are there ways to make particles emit particles?

17

I don’t believe so, that was going to be a result of pynodes i think, where logic could be imparted to particle behavior. But I may well be wrong.