I have managed to make a smoke simulation and it looks nice, but the problem is I can’t make the smoke white. I need it white because I want it to look like steam.
since this is highly dependent of the material and not the simulation, you need to tell us wich render engine are you planning to use.
I’m using cycles.
having just a white volume scatter with the anisotrpy between -0.5 and 0 and a low density , should work ok if you have a good lighting. (this means that probably all your other materials should be a bit darker.)
Using a more then white color can also give nice results (i.e. pluging a value node to the color, with some value above 1), but this won’t give realistic results.
Another way to fake it, is mix it with an emission shader, and probably you’ll need to filter indirect rays so the smoke doesn’t illuminate the scene.
a white volume scatter is volumetrics, not a smoke simulation, right?
How do I add an emission shader to the smoke? where do I change smoke material? I have tried adding a material to the flow object, but that didn’t work…
The material should be assigned to the domain object. Here’s an example that should work ok in most scenarios:
Mixing the scatter with an emission will bake it brighter, but also illuminate the scene.
Another important thing is to have the lights with the Multiple Importance turned on.
To prevent an Emit shader from actually emitting, you need to mix it with a Transparent shader (color full white) and use “Camera” from the Light Path node to mix them together:
This tells Cycles that the camera will see the Emit shader, but everything else in the scene sees a fully transparent item, thus no extra illumination.
Also, in your node setup, piping your color Attribute into an Add node is an interesting solution. You can also pipe it into a Hue/Saturation Node, where you can increase the “Value” until you have it as white as you need it. One nice thing about this node is it can handle colored smoke inputs as well. For instance, if you want a light-tan colored smoke.
Thanks a lot guys, think this should do it!
ok, I have followed Secrop’s suggestion and I got this:
I have managed to adjust density by changeing the value in multiply. But still the smoke is not white enough. My flow object density is 1 and domain’s is -0.001. Should I change these values to get what I want?
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If you want ABSOLUTE white smoke, without any shadows (which make it not-white), then you should simply use an Emit shader piped into your volume, plain and simple. It will also render a lot faster. Or you can just mix a standard smoke setup with the Emit, just a teeny bit, until you get the shadows you desire.
ok, thanks benu.