Further to yesterday's semi successful video I have been giving the job another coat of looking at. One of the many problems was the fire, I couldn't get it to register with the ring of stones and I used a simple cone as the emitter. This time I used a star shape with a bit of thickness, the Blender manual says one requires a bit of thickness to get emitters to work, no shortage of thickness here I can assure you. I altered the workflow and now the stones fit fine.
The fire could be rendered out with the rest of the scene but even with the physics baked it would probably stop my machine. The solution is to render the fire on it's own with a transparent background (Called the Alpha Channel) then pop the stones et al back in the compositor. This is better and probably good enough for video.
Here are a few stills from a 150 frame animation, the first thirty frames go in the bin as it takes that long to get going.
Low Resolution (32 passes/Frame)..
One hundred passes, this is still low resolution as apparently the posh folk will Bake 500 to stupid numbers. I can't wait that long as it soon gets into days rather than minutes.
The same shot but colour corrected. I'm still getting the problem of the simulation base showing.
This is much better I moved the emitter a bit lower and reduced it's size on the 'X' & 'Y' axes. The stones are a bit large now but this is acceptable to me. I can reduce the stone size a bit and pop a rock texture on easily enough. I have altered the ground as an observant lady noticed it looked like the moon surface. It did and there I was thinking it looked subtle. It can look like any sort of ground with a few clicks on the keyboard. PBR (Physically Based Render) textures are available in everything from polished gold material to Laura Ashley curtain stuff. There are hundreds of free ones there to be borrowed. They are quite hefty files so make sure to download the .zip version.
I see certain cynical Americans are running a competition for the vote cast by the oldest voter. In first place so far is Ethan McDonald who is a hundred and thirty six years old. Unfortunately he passed away in 1984. RIP Ethan.
The way I look at it is Trump saved the world from four years of Hillary Clinton and that has to be a bonus.
ReplyDeleteFor all his faults he is a breath of fresh air. All politicians should be made to disclose the source of their wealth. We do have the UWO here but it doesn't apply to UK nationals. Tells you all you need to know. The Clintons and Bidens are awful but we have many as bad.
DeleteForgot to comment yesterday. I also assumed it was a Moonscape. Today's fire looks better with it confined behind the stones.
ReplyDeleteJohn, I just grabbed a texture and liked the monochrome effect. The stones will work given practise. It gets very confusing as there are a couple of dozen variables to play with and that's before you get to colouring in. I suspect that folk doing it professionally start out doing just a bit of it. That must get tedious but then most work is.
DeleteYou must be pleased with the progress. I like look of a fire in a rock fireplace - on a rocky beach. It's probably not what you are going for but I like it.
ReplyDeleteIt is better Pauline. I wasn't really going for a particular look. The modelling, light and the physics are the hard bit. The colouring in is quick and easy. I'll save this for another video.
DeleteStrange days. You spend hours creating a virtual fire. In the Good Old Days when you started blogging you just went out and took a photograph.
ReplyDeleteGraham, I still take photographs but have got as good as I'm going to get. This is much more challenging. It's just something to while away the early hours.
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