help with smoke sim please

I have created this somewhat simple scene.
I wanted to add a smoke simulation to it so I went through the steps to make a working smoke simulation.

I added a domain, setup the flow object, setup the domain’s material and texture so that it would render…and now everything is visible in the 3d view but I am unable to see the smoke in the render window.

To make sure I was doing everything correctly I started a new scene and smoke renders fine with with cubes, so I am pretty sure I have the basics down.
I even tried appending the object’s from the work in progress to a new blend scene, but something odd happens… the visual representation of smoke in the 3d window is accurate but what is rendered is inaccurate ( the location of the rendered smoke is displaced away from the object that it flows from)

After trying to troubleshoot the project by appending I went back to the original and simplified the scene.

Basically I can’t get the smoke to render except in the 3d window…
Inside the attached blend is 3 lights, a text.001 mesh, and a cube (I wanted the text.001 mesh to smoke and use the cube as the domain).
I have made many attempts to resolve the issue but I find myself with the same results: no smoke.
It is puzzling…

any help appreciated.

Attachments

nosmoke.blend (424 KB)

Sounds like haven’t set up a particle system. You should check the official documentation:

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.5/Manual/Physics/Smoke

Umm, there’s nothing in that file, well, there is stuff there, but nothing setup for smoke sim. No domain, emitter, etc, perhaps you posted the wrong file…

Anyhow, I played with the file, deleted the domain, built a new one, setup materials, etc, and it’s working for me. Give it a try, and before you can render it, you have to select the emitter, go into the particles panel and bake the sim. It will appear in the 3d window but not in render if it’s not baked.

Randy

Attachments

nosmoke.blend (865 KB)

@revolt_randy yes I am able to see what you have done, but I am unable to recreate the effect.

I believe I am following the tutorial.
I am using blender 2.56.0 r33949 from blender.org that was released just the other day… the 31st of Dec if I am correct.

This is what I have done to the nosmoke.blend I have uploaded which yields no smoke.
I select the cube and set it to domain.

I select the text.001 mesh and set up a particle system with no physics in the particle settings tab along with none on the render options leaving Emitter enabled.
Then I setup text.001 mesh to be a flow object in the physics tab.

Now I select the domain object and setup its materials and textures so it will render properly using the volume setting and voxel data as per the tutorial.

I save my blendfile.

I select the domain which is the cube, and in the physics tab under smoke cache I enter the file name “test” and then click bake.
after a few moments I play the animation from 1 and stop it.

I press f12 and the result is: no smoke.

I am really quite puzzled.
here is a video (no sound) of what I am doing… about 90 seconds long…
http://vimeo.com/18375091

https://vimeo.com/18375091

any help appreciated.

OK, this didn’t hit me when I looked at your file, but my file works because I deleted the domain you have and replaced it with a cube. Then I scaled the cube in size in object mode. In the transforms panel you can see my cube has a scale of 5 in all directions. Your domain, although it’s bigger than a cube has no scale, so you scaled it in edit mode or applied the scale to it. Delete your domain and replace it with another one, scaling the new one in object mode, and don’t apply scale!

I’ve read more than one thread where the domain was scaled in edit mode, so the object’s scale doesn’t change, and the sim didn’t work. The other common problem I read about is not baking the sim. Unlike the fluid sim, the smoke sim will appear to work with alt-a but won’t render unless it’s baked, that’s why I suggested it in my last post.

One other side note: don’t cover up your render window while rendering an animation with smoke sim. If you do, any unrendered tiles for that frame will be corrupted. I’ve reported it as a bug, and it’s not fixed yet. :frowning:

There are a lot of pitfalls to using the smoke sim, one mis-step, like not scaling the domain in object mode, and the whole thing fails.

lemme know if this helps any,
Randy

ok I got a functional render, thank you.
it seems when the “new window” option is set for the render display option there is an issue.
I have dual monitors and if I render the window on top of blender I get no smoke, but if I drag the blender render window to the second monitor away from blender main it renders with smoke.
quiet an oddity, and I guess it is a BUG…

thanks for your help

I guess this particular issue is resolved.