Hey all, I got my last question answered pretty quickly, so I’m hoping that someone can shed some light on my new problem.
I’m following the smoke tutorial http://www.blenderguru.com/introduction-to-smoke-simulation/ . And I have an issue.
My .blend will only render a black frame, animations are all black frames.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3157059/Tutorial%20-%20Smoke.blend
Anyone have any idea what I did Wrong? Is it something really simple.
version Blender 2.5 Alpha 2 27991
Hi hamsterstyle, so just a quick answer. 
It works, when you turn on ‘Raytracing’ in Render -> Shading panel
and bake your particle system to see it rising in 3D view.
Awesome, that fixed that problem.
New problem that I’ve seen a couple times.
I bake, then render it, and it renders the smoke in little boxes as if the inside of the domain has like 5x5 little smoking emitters. Is this due to how i resized the domain for the smoke?
Also, if I wanted to do an effect of an object flying through the air leaving a trail of smoke behind it, what would the domain for that look like? Would it be ‘the air’ or an area behind the object that the smoke would appear in? Or is this a far more advanced question than I should be asking 1 month into learning blender?
I bake, then render it, and it renders the smoke in little boxes as if the inside of the domain has like 5x5 little smoking emitters. Is this due to how i resized the domain for the smoke?
You already answered it yourself.
Yes. Scale the smoke domain only in object mode. Go into edit mode and scale it down again, then scale up 5 times in object mode and it’s fine.
Also, if I wanted to do an effect of an object flying through the air leaving a trail of smoke behind it, what would the domain for that look like? Would it be ‘the air’ or an area behind the object that the smoke would appear in? Or is this a far more advanced question than I should be asking 1 month into learning blender?
You don’t have to change the domain at all, just use a simple cube. “Never mess with the domain - in edit mode.” ^^
For smoke trails, just animate your particles (or your particle emitter, depends on your scene). To get more details into the smoke trails you might have to play with smoke settings. You can even use addtional textures (procedural as well) to influence e.g. the density.
Oh, an idea: I believe, you don’t have to use smoke simulation, you could also get nice, smocky trails with particles and volumetrics. Would be worth to try.
