Why is it so hard and non intuitive to make smoke and fire in Blender?. I’m trying to make a short 10/15 sec animation with a candle flame and some incense. If I try to create fire or smoke on a clean new file, sometimes it works without doing nothing, just adding the quick effect does the job, sometimes I have to set the emitter to Fire, and bake for it to work, sometimes I have to set the Cache to “Replay” for it to show up on the viewport, but sometimes I don’t have to, it just shows correctly.
When I try to create the effect on one of my blender files, it just won’t work. If I try to do it away from my scene, it works, but it’s now a 2m fireball so I have to scale it down and it looks horrible anyway. When I try to render the smoke it won’t show up, it just shows on the Rendered Viewport, not in the final render, If I try it on a clean Blend file, it renders correctly. WHAT THE FU$%#$%?!.
Most tutorials are old, they reference buttons and functions that are not there anymore or are already set up and it won’t work anyways.
Does anyone know a good alternative?. After effects?, Unreal Engine?, there has to be a way that just works, a solid program that can do the job and not randomly or whenever it feels like it.
Do yourself a favour, discard mantaflow for now until they adress the issues with bad update and replay of cache, and also it is slow to simulate.
Switch to blender 2.81 and use the older fluid system, it is better for direct feedback when tweaking any force and replays much better by just jumping back to the zero key, mantafluids doesn´t…and each tweak you do with a force…you have to reselect replay cache…and it also takes time to do process that.
They need to rework the mantafluid system or revert back.
It takes a bit of time do do fire and smoke nicely in blender, but it´s way easier with the old system.
Forget about after effects or unreal…they are not designed for that purpose.
And as you said…I have the same issue, I tried with vdb files from embergen, while a sequence shows up in viewport ipr, it isn´t in final render…so it´s not usable, I was given the advice to download yet another blender version the alpha 2.89.
You can always download houdini apprentice and use the fire sims from there, it is free …but leaves a watermark when rendering, you can at least export it as vdb and render in blender, but then again…final renders not working in 2.83, so maybe 2.89.
Yes, pretty much realtime, but you can increase resolution so it ´s not working in realtime either, so it´s not perfect…but really awesome at what it does anyway.
And any simulation has to be made with forces, collisions etc within embergen…and once exported, the sim is no longer tweakable unless you go back and redo it…that is pretty much the only drawback with it…not working in context with blender scene elments that needs to be changed within the blender scene.
Not sure how long time Embergen takes to export the vdbs, it looks darn good though…
Lightwave sample…sim not by me, so it was made for another purpose than a tank explosion fire…so it´s a bit off to say at least:)
But fire and smoke is doable with the older blender fluid system…
Old many years ago demo turbulenceFD for Lightwave (which is probably not an option considering you have to pay for lightwave And turbulenceFd) but for fire and smoke…it was a bit easier to get it right than blender actually, but it had/has an older volumetric system…not pbr, while looking good it was …is slow to render as well.
Yes, we are aware of that it´s a blender issue, not embergen…it´s the same with houdini sims.
Once you try to final render, it doesn´t show up in final render, but in ipr vieport only.
At least in the 2.83 build, and the 2.89 was recommended instead…but I haven´t gotten that far.
Yes…embergen looks awesome, but I still have to try the trial with exports, only tested the early versions and withing embergen only.
Yes…embergen scales are huge, we need a way to find out the proper scale going from embergen to blender…and lightwave for that matter, same there.
I also notice that the origin(pivot) of the container in embergen vdb sims seems to not bee centered…that also can cause some issues when you expect the center origing to be in the center of the container, but it´s not.
Yeah at this time I think the pivot point is at the bottom of the container I believe but you can set the coordinate system to match blenders too as seen here in the vdb export node:
We do have plans to allow you to change the pivot point as well though.
Sounds like its time for you to actually try it
The beta is a gigantic improvement over the alpha.
Absolutely…I am a bit annoyed on my self that I haven´t started yet…but I also got a lot to fix at home before summer now kicks in over here within a couple of days:)
I would have tried it already if it werent for the issues of blender not rendering the vdb´s in final render, so either I need to track that down, or try the 2.89 build…and download and install that first.
But I also wanted to work a bit more first with clouds and houdini exports …to get to understand the vdbs and some shading …before I try embergen out, that is because I want to maximize the time I can use it for 14 days to ensure I know how to shade it properly and make sure it also renders.
In lightwave it shouldn´t be a problem though, for blender I think I will prefer to use mostly cloud sims, which I think embergen may work great for as well, and blender does multiple scattering much faster and better than in Lightwave currently.
Which can be seen here from the WDA disney sample which I rendered in blender, I can´t get this nice multiple scattering within Lightwave unfortunately, while a free software like blender does it great.
And since I am not upgrading to Lightwave 2020, I may save that money for maybe a License for embergen instead.
Houdini Indie also one of my prospects to invest in.
And for the issues of the sequences not rendering in final render, maybe…I just missed the camera clipping…at such scales it needs to be increased a lot…not sure if I did, will have to check that…but a little sceptic to it though, can check right now cause I am rendering clouds right now…as usual
POSSIBLY SOLVED ISSUE…WORKAROUND.
I started a new thread about the issue with 2.83 not final rendering, to see if someone else had a solution and at the same time continueing to check all settings…and I suddenly got it working, what I did is this…
I did one little change, in the vdb volume properties …I changed from clip to extend, and voila…suddenly it rendered…in final renders.
Then switching back to clip again…and it still renders, so something with the mode settings that isn´t refreshing properly…but this may solve the issues.
Sure…here you go, in blender 2.83
And in the vdb object data properties, see red arrow…it´s the sequence playback mode.
I reckon it simply doesn´t recognize which playback mode to use when you load a vdb, but once you select anyone…it should work.
Also make sure your camera clipping is large enough in meters that it covers the vdb container.
