I have a picture of clouds that I would to turn into a tornado like image. I want to twist the image as you look towards the bottom. I do not really need to do this in 3 d but think that blender offers an interesting way to add creative lighting. I guess I need to start with a 3d cone and map my image to that. Then I need to add transparency to the bottom of the image. Is this the right way to proceed?
search or ask questions for tornado sample file in thread here
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=166174&highlight=volume+render
salutations
Tutorial here.
thank you for your replies but this is much more than i need. The information in the links you provided is actually for creating a tornado from SCRATCH. This allows for extremely detailed visuals with a model that allows for manipulation->animation.
But I do not need this. I want to make a single image.
I want to use a SPECIFIC image that I already have.
I want to narrow the bottom of the image and swirl it so it looks like its ‘going down a drain’
I want to make the bottom of the image more transparent so I can see through the twisted, swirled part.
Although you’d think I could do this in photoshop, that application does not have good 3d tools.
To conceptualize the transformation I’d like to do
1)map my image to a ‘ribbon’ that is narrower at the bottom than at the top
2) make the image transparent at the bottom of the ribbon
3) twist the bottom of the ribbon