Hey people,
Atm i am attempting to create my interpretation of the Veil room in harry potter book 5
not because i am particularly fond of the series or anything but because i thought it was interesting and saw it as a chance to try some new things
I have finished some of the blocking out but as you can probably tell from the image below i have a long way to go, at the moment the mist inside the archway is a placeholder until i figure out a good method to place mist only inside that archway and possibly have some blurry skulls or something inside it symbolising lost souls or something of the sort, I would also like to know a good method to make tiles for the floor of this room without UV mapping. i would like to know how to make certain objects be emitted as particles (such as a UV sphere) so i can use a particle fire tutorial i am particularly fond of (blender art magazine 16) on torches to be placed around the room although it would be nice to know how to use them as a primary source of lighting it is not neccesary as i do not know how as of yet. Other thoughts i had would be to have semi-focused rays of light hitting the archway as well as other possible forms of lighting… maybe darker AO if that is possible? and in the final render i will be intending to use DOF on the archway so detail in the background is not a huge issue IMO but any detailed suggestions would be greatly appreciated
so as you can tell here i am a long way from finished but perhaps with some expert help i can make a decent render of my scene, will be remodelling archway though.
.Blend file is here, would appreciate visual assistance too (not asking for it to be done for me) http://www.mediafire.com/?j3bi1bw5cd0
For mist, especially in a localized area like this, you could model a box to contain the particles, or a lattice. I have another idea though, it might not match the effect in Harry Potter, but I think it could be cool.
Create multiple planes that match the shape of the arch, then run them through the cloth simulator, making sure that collision is turned off for them, so that they intersect. Make sure to add some wind and variation so they don’t just sit there. After that, assign them a cloud texture, or any texture, but make sure to create an alpha mask, so that parts of the texture will be transparent. As a final bit, create an empty for each plane?cloth, and map each plane/cloth textures to an empty, and animate the empties. This will cause the textures to move with the empties, giving you further control over how the mist animates.
Great help, sounds like a nice way to do it, perhaps a bit fiddly but i will give it a go tonight and see how it goes, i have the perfect cloud texture with alpha so i can use that and would very much like to try it with your suggested method so thank you for that and i am hoping that solves this problem, only issue is that if i use your other method to contain the particles i still do not know how to have the particles being emitted being copies of my UVSphere
aside from that this seems like a very good idea and i will happily try it tonight, perhaps earlier.
Any suggestions for other problems?
Thanks Spleeny and DW it does not need to match the effect at all, harry potter scene was just used as the base idea
Why use spheres? Use billboards. And I have a blend file with my method in case you wanted to look at it. It’s rough, but you get the general idea. Also rendered a quick vid, but it’s probably not done processing yet.
What are billboards? Idk really, Spheres are just what the tutorial suggested so that is why i mentioned it. Btw i like the demonstration its just that the cloth doesnt seem to animate at all which is slightly confusing but thank you very much for your ideas and i will bear them in mind
Edit* Just saw your video, looks nice just a little criticism of that method in regards to my final render is that i will not really be aiming to make an animation so attempting to control these aspects wont be as easy + i would probably aim for something darker with more volume but no worries i will have a play
Cloth setting are something you need to tweak for a while.
But Billboards are a way for particles to be rendered. If you go to the Visualization panel in the particle settings, you set the visualization to billboards, which are basically planes that can be set to always face the camera. Billboards can be very useful for making volumetric like smoke effects, similar to what I believe you want to do.
The best source I have for understanding billboards is from this guy: http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=162261
you might not need fire, but you can get a good sense of the basics from the tutorial.
Actually, it might not be basic, but simulating mist or smoke like the way you want never is. Good luck to you though!
Thank you very much once again, this project is (as i intended) already helping me umderstand more about blender itself and what can be achieved with blender, been working on the scene last night but hit a few snags, the 1st of which i accidentally set subsurf to 3 on everything (while still inside blender) causing it to crash (although not b4 i had saved it) took like 3 hours to un-subsurf it all. Second snag is that i am not sure how to use separate composite nodes I.E i have DOF using composite nodes for the entire scene while i want to be able to use composite nodes to also make my fire
@RickyBlender
Sure, no problem at all i was due for an update anyway. .Blend File is now in a .Rar file to save on size, actual file is 78Mb (better then the 300Mb i had it at before fixing) and inside the .Rar is only around 4Mb ( the miracle of compression)
Atm i have figured out how to use render layers so have been experimenting with that with semi-pleasing results, having trouble keeping the room dark though while still having light coming from the halo fire (particles caused problems and DOF kinda takes the point out of it IMO) so have removed for now. I would like to have the room darker but still unsure how without affecting areas such as the center, Composite nodes maybe? I am still a noob so what i say should be taken with a grain of salt
Below is the current stage i am at, still alot of work on detail i would like to do but dont know where to start, still have yet to implement any advanced smoke/mist effects and for now am leaving it as a plane with a cloud material until extra work has been compled, current .Rar file is here http://www.mediafire.com/?tygtmf2gjtbchanged link
Hi again,
Here is the new link, hopefully this one works, the original .rar (before upload seemed to open fine but i have not yet checked after upload, with this one i will be sure to check it works before posting link and will also work on other computers aside from my own. Also this is not meant to sound condecending but are you using winRAR? if not i would advise it as that is what i created the .rar in
"have you tried 2.5 new volumetric if it is working
shouls be able to do some good fog i think "
Thanks for sharing
i got the file and it unzip fine
is this an animation or just a single shot render ?
i can see in background some fog or clouds
but there is nothin else behind to enhance the effect
might be a good idea to add few little things around to give a better feeling of 3D !
i can see the 2 flmaes in back which are dstorted
don’t know but still no 3D effect
there must be a trick here to make it look more 3D
but in a still shot it could be more difficult to get thsi effect
volumetric is a new 2.5 feature to make coulds smoke fire i think
i use it ounce so still learning about it
but seems to be very promissing for volumetric effects
so may be try to find some tut or vid on this subject might help
if i find some thing i’ll be back
It seems to me your file sizes are way too big for the simplicity of the image. It’s a good image, nice lighting, but when I downloaded your first uploaded blend, I saw a lot of unnecessary geometry. Try getting rid of unneeded faces and verts, and post some screenshots of your stuff in edit mode .
Yeah, soz guys currently dont have access to my computer atm but will try some things when i get back on the 5th, got plenty of ideas and will have a play. will also try to simplify
Thanks RickyBlender btw, just saw the pages and looks like 2.5 will be amazing, will definitely try some of the effects when i can & cant wait till full release
hmm… the fog i have atm? there is no fog in there… the closest things u could be meaning are the veil thing which is just 2 planes with procedural cloud textures and the DOF which i did with nodes (possibly overdid)
the miracle of compression)
i’m a noob lol