My guess is this would be done with some kind of texture, but I’m not sure. Is there a way to make an objects outilnes nebulous and wobbly? I’m trying to make an unusual fire and I think I’ll have what I want if I can make some NURBS surfaces have indistinct outlines (preferably with a random variation throughout) and make the edges waver and wobble in and out. It’s not as good as particles, but this is not a photo-realistic situation.
Thanks!
You might want to ask in the animation forum about that?
I was hoping it might have something to do with coloring or texturing or other settings that would basically create some kind of unstable outlines. Okay. I’ll hold that part of the project until I get farther along in the manual! (Boy this program has a lot of things to learn!)
For jello-like wobble you use SoftBody. For shimmer (heat waves) you can use an object with Alpha at zero and an animated Cloud texture set to Nor and Raytraced so it uses Fresnel to distort what’s behind it. Search for tuts on bullet trails. Before raytracing they used alpha Metaballs, sometimes as dupliverted particles.
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For the immediate purpose, which was to make a 2D image so I could use it for some printouts, I made a Bezier curve, turned all the control points to vectors, and made an outline that looked like stylized fire coming out the back. Then I duplicated it, scaled it down a bit, made the bigger one red and the smaller yellow, then made the curves beveled, which made the outlines look better. Using these means I could only use one camera angle, since they’re flat and if not shot from the side would look bad, but it works for now.
I will be trying what Fligh has suggested. Unfortunately some of it is still beyond where I am on the learning curve, but I can try some of it. When I learn more, I’ll try putting it all together. Maybe it’ll make a neat kind of fire for toon rendering or comic book style images.
What manual are you working from?