Having an issue with the smoke for the gun. Is there a way to make the smoke thinner at the top? I’ve added a lattice but scaling it does not seem to make the trail thinner or thicker. Any suggestion would be appreciated.
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if the smoke is a particle trail following a vortex, then decrease their life and they will fade away with old age toward the top, thinning naturally. also spread the vortex out at the top; the two contrails in the middle merge toward the top, and thus will be thicker (actually, denser is a better term). instead of merging the two contrails, fan them out thinner.
If the smoke is a mesh, then use a stencil mapped to alpha where the stencil blurs from white to black from bottom to top, thus making the material fade away.
Thanks Roger,
What you say does make sense but this is starting to do my head in. I found a particles example on the web for cigarette smoke which I thought would work well for me. To save myself a bit of time I decide to apply the material from the example and create my own particle settings. What I found was that no matter what changes I applied to the material that was imported the result was the same.
In the screen dumps I’ve got the settings form the material imported (smoke) and the material recreated from the settings imported (smoketest). What I can not understand is why the result so different? The gun on the left has the new material applied the gun on the right has the material imported applied. Am I missing something? Is this a bug? Should the result be the same on both guns?
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Cheers, Kordo.
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I think you may be looking in the wrong place. the material is fine. The life of the particles, in frames, is on the Object F7 buttons, Particles panel.
I’ve reduced the life from 50 to 25 but it doesn’t seem to be working. What I was trying to do in the materials is reduce the halo. Way would the result be so different in the previous post if all I did was re-create the material should I not be getting a same result? I did not change any on the particle setting on either side.
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Ok I think this is a bit better. I turned on Motion Blur and also reduced the Alpha value on the new material.
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sometimes I have to use the power of 2 approach. I cut a setting in half, and see what happens, then cut it in half again, and again and again and then I hit this magical switching point where it goes YES BUT TOO FAR, but at least I can then bracket in what the setting should be. Like with particles and alpha and how much beer I can drink before passing out.