Hey,
I’ve been trying to work with smoke simulation and volumetrics but my graphics card doesn’t support it. Is there any workaround I can use to try out smoke simulation?
What do you mean your graphics card doesn’t support smoke and volumetrics?
It’s computed via CPU not GPU.
He’s either talking about the simulation of the smoke data, or the display of the smoke data.
Expanding on what jawra stated above, you don’t need a cuda or openCL enabled card to run the smoke sim, it’s all done with the CPU (that’s why it takes so bloody long!).
As far as DISPLAYING the smoke sim… not sure what cards CAN’T do this. AFAIK, the “smoke” as it exists in the viewport is just a bunch of planes that auto-orient towards the closest axis to the camera’s facing. If your graphics card cannot display some transparent planes… get a new card.
Every time I attempt to render the smoke sim or view it in the viewport, the console says “error: your gfx card doesn’t support smoke simulation.” This is a little odd, considering that the smoke material shows up fine in the material preview window.
Indeed it’s odd. What GFX have you got? And what about drivers? It may be OpenGL issue.
Any other problems with displaying things in 3d viewport? More details, please.
It’s an old card, a NVida Geforce MX4000. I’m not sure if this is too old (I don’t think it is), so I’ll check my OpenGL drivers again.
Nothing odd here, the mx4000 is beyond old (sorry)
Those cards are 9 years old, only support DX7 and haven´t even got shaders, they still base on the hardware texture and lighting technology and only support OpenGL 1.3 and NO GLSL.
As far as i know volumetrics require GLSL in the viewport, which is a feature OpenGL 2.0+ has with GLSL 1.1
Current state of the art is OpenGL 3.0, GLSL 1.3.
No need to check your driver, your card is too old.
Unfortunately I can´t tell you if there is a minimum version of GLSL Blender requires but I am sure someone can fill this unknown. But there are plenty of cards for 30-50 Bucks that outperform your current one by a factor 10-20 and offer all needed features.
Thanks. I did mean to say MX 440, but I’m assuming that’s too old as well…
Yeh, it is basically the same generation.
There is the TI4400 and the MX440.
MX440 is the poor version of the TI4400
The TI4400 is based on the GF3 series, while the MX440 is based on the GF2 series chip.
That´s also the reason why the TI models could handle DX8 and the MX models are stuck with DX7.
I feel sorry for you, your card is beyond garbage for blender, good thing xmas is coming up =)
I have no money, dude. I’m just wondering if there’s some way I can work around this by allowing smoke to be calculated via CPU or something.
Under Smoke sim tab there are two buttons: a Camera to allow sim rendering and an Eye button to allow preview in 3dViewport. Try to uncheck Eye button to get rid smoke from 3dViewport.
Yeah, I tried that. The smoke won’t even render. If it can’t preview, how can it render?
Hmm… It’s really strange. Vis buttons have wrong behavior. Uncheck preview - no baking no rendering, uncheck render - it still renders!!! I’m gonna report it after some tests with newer build. Sorry
You should be able to get a card that will do the trick for $30-$50. It won’t be fantastic, but it’ll support OpenGL 2.0 at least (which is good enough for smoke sims). This should do the trick: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150469
Buy newer pc done.
or download older blender.
but the smoke sim is outdated but atleast match with ur machine.