I was admiring the rocket exhaust of XCOR’s methane engine:
http://www.xcor.com/press-releases/2007/07-01-16_XCOR_begins_methane_engine_testing.html
It looks like a simple row of overlapping spindle shapes.
However, note how the overlapping parts are about four times as bright as the other parts.
Is there any easy way to do this with Blender, or would I be better off hand modeling the overlap part as a separate mesh with its own halo texture?
To get that sceen/additive effect when the waves overlap I would suggest using seperate objects perhaps as an array (modifier). That way you could get the expansion and compression as well as that bright intermediate zone.
Strand shader and color ramp, maybe? What an awesome flame!
Just one question: Are you creating a still image, or an animation?
holy smokes, I want one for my Viper. that exhaust looks surreal, almost like they doctored it with photoshop (or blender). that really is something to be admired.
Make a cone and give it a halo material, and put them in a tube using a normaled material (see material nodes, normal node, gus is pregnant example). Also use color ramps to give that blue-to-violet color shift.
@ammusionist: I wonder what it did look like in real life? I wonder if those puff triangles receded away at like 300 mph? or was there a regular strobing effect…must have been something to see…and hear.
Oh, lordy, just a still.
I have nowhere near the skill to animate anything that complicated.
I’m pretty sure those are what is called “shock diamonds” or “mach discs”. They are stationary, flickering in fixed positions inside the flame.
Yep. Stationary.
There is a video clip here:
Ha ha. That was the … most pointless technical video ever. Cool though. Easy to edit then as it just wobles in and out a bit. I’m with everyone else now, ramps and perhaps ramp fall off around the edges.