Material for re-entry effect

[joseph]

Suzanne quickly returning from space - Atmospheric reentry effect test

Hello ! I’ve been trying to achieve a convincing atmospheric re-entry effect for some time. I tried several methods (simulation, particles, volumetric shading…) But the most successful method currently is using the geometry node and the mesh to volume node. The idea is to extract the part of the mesh that faces the airflow (x axis) using the raycast node and extrude it around the object and then back. The volume conversion creates something quite interesting and with a bit of noise in the shad…