Since a couple of days (!) I am trying to create mist and learned a lot about the parameters for smoke physics. However to this day I’m not able to create the mist I want.
Essentially what I am trying to create is mist fluctuating slowly upwards around an object.
Also there seems to be something off with my render settings. When I render in Workbench it looks as in the viewport (meaning I see all the smoke). But when I render in EEVEE or Cycles the smoke is very thin, almost not visible. And every change I make to the color doesn’t seem to change it …
Questions:
How do the temperature difference of the flow object and the domain object relate to each other?
Do you guys have some tips or even an example file?
These are a lot of questions Let me try to answer one after another:
about the some settings, I don’t think there is any special trick. Tweaking temperature diff, vorticity and density should give you the behavior you want
render looks odd when setting up the shader in the most simple way. Honest I also haven’t figured out how to make it look really good, in particular with fire. But still some remarks:
– increase the density (with a multiply math node) if the smoke looks too thin (or increase the density in the sim)
– if you actually want mist, you should use a pure volume scatter shader. For smoke you need a combination of scatter and absorption (but predominantly absorption)
– if you want to make the ‘edges’ of the smoke more prominent, put a color ramp after the density input
color seems to behave odd in the viewport with 2.80, sometimes it appears, sometimes it doesn’t for me. But it can be rendered (accessing it with an input attribute node ‘color’).
temperature difference of the domain specifies how much ‘buoyancy’ a temperature difference creates, meaning higher values make smoke rise faster. temperature of the flow object specifies how large the temperature difference between the inflowing smoke and the surrounding air is. both values make the smoke rise faster. the value of the domain is a global scale, but if you have multiple flow objects you can just the values of these to adjust it per object.
Also thanks for your example file, I checked it however when I use your node setup I still don’t get white smoke …
I put a material on the flow object because I saw that in a tutorial. Is that actually necessary?
Or is the look of the smoke only created by a material on the domain?
The material of the flow object has no effect on the appearance of the smoke.
About your render, well maybe I missunderstand what you mean by white smoke. A pure volume scatter node make ‘mist’. It is exactly what is used to create white clouds in the sky. But they only appear white, if they are hit by light coming from somewhere.
Is your crystal the only light source? That might not be sufficient, For testing, add a strong sun lamp. If you intend for the crystal to be the only light source, it usually requires a bit of trickery, if one can see the light source directly, which lits up the rest of the scene. The dynamic range will be too high. Common are tricks with the light path node or in the compositor.
Thank you, your support helped me morally to continue work on the smoke!
I am so stupdid I should just have built a shader for clouds and that would’ve done the job.
Let me try to answer one after another:
Nice that I could contribute a little bit.